DOJ Hasn't Actually Found Silk Road Founder's Bitcoin Yet

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DOJ Hasn't Actually Found Silk Road Founder's Bitcoin Yet

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 5, 2013 @02:58PM from the what-are-the-odds dept.

Techdirt has an interesting followup on the arrest and indictment of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, in connection to which the FBI seized 26,000 or so Bitcoins. From the Techdirt piece: "However, in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million -- or about 600,000 Bitcoins. You might notice the disconnect between the 26,000 Bitcoins seized and the supposed 600,000 Ulbright made. It now comes out that those 26,000 Bitcoins aren't even Ulbricht's. Instead, they're actually from Silk Road's users. In other words, these were Bitcoins stored with user accounts on Silk Road. Ulbricht's actual wallet is separate from that, and was apparently encrypted, so it would appear that the FBI does not have them, nor does it have any way of getting at them just yet. And given that some courts have argued you can't be forced to give up your encryption, as it's a 5th Amendment violation, those Bitcoins could remain hidden -- though, I could see the court ordering him to pay the dollar equivalent in restitution (though still not sure that would force him to decrypt the Bitcoins)." The article also notes that the FBI's own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction.

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Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:03 · Score: 0

Could he have another individual in another country transfer his bitcoins away from where the FBI could get at them, if the FBI eventually got access to his wallet?
Money for his defense by cold+fjord · 2013-10-05 15:04 · Score: 2

He might need some of that hoard to pay for his defense. I don't know that going cheap on this will be in his interest.

--
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
1. Re:Money for his defense by hsmith · 2013-10-05 15:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  But that is part of the game. You gut someones means and prosecute them so they can't defend themselves. That is the game the government plays.
2. Re:Money for his defense by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-10-05 15:15 · Score: 1
  
  If the affidavit is accurate, he's going to have a hard time dodging the charges. Spending all his money on defense might not be the best option.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
3. Re:Money for his defense by girlintraining · 2013-10-05 15:36 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  But that is part of the game. You gut someones means and prosecute them so they can't defend themselves. That is the game the government plays.
  Only with people dumb enough to not prepare ahead of time for this. This guy was 'new money'. He didn't know how to manage his assets, how to invest, how to setup multiple accounts, and didn't have the good sense to bond a lawyer ahead of time and give them limited power of attorney so they could coordinate his estate while he was in jail. See, this is what 'old money' does, and it means they get to hire entire bus loads of attorneys to show up at court, and the government can't do dick about it because they were bought and paid for ahead of time and are being funded out of accounts they can't seize or have access to because the money's been cleaned and separated from his personal accounts through shell corporations, etc.
  Don't talk about how to play the game... this guy wasn't a player, he was a loser. He was setup from day one, by his own stupidity, to lose. If I was running a website like that, the very first thing I'd have done after getting ahead financially is separate out as much money as I could for future legal troubles, and hire accountants and lawyers so when the day came to save my sorry ass, all I'd have to do is just sit in jail and wait while Plan Bravo executed all on its own to spring me.
  But, since the man was basically a walking cliche instead of a proper criminal or businessman or even passably decent nerd, I feel compelled to quote off his namesake:
  "Do you hear that, Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when the six-fingered man killed my father. The Man in Black makes it now."
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
4. Re:Money for his defense by mysidia · 2013-10-05 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  You're not allowed to use gains the government claims are ill-gotten, in order to fund your defense.
  Once they claim certain dollars are proceeds of illegal activity, they freeze the assets, and they will be held in trust, or held by police, until the charges are settled.
  That means those bitcoins will be unavailable to use for his defense, even if they are his, and he does decrypt them.
5. Re:Money for his defense by David_Hart · 2013-10-05 15:44 · Score: 2
  
  Don't talk about how to play the game... this guy wasn't a player, he was a loser. He was setup from day one, by his own stupidity, to lose. If I was running a website like that, the very first thing I'd have done after getting ahead financially is separate out as much money as I could for future legal troubles, and hire accountants and lawyers so when the day came to save my sorry ass, all I'd have to do is just sit in jail and wait while Plan Bravo executed all on its own to spring me.
  So, what you're saying is that Walter White did it right in Breaking Bad when he hired Saul with a rather large retainer.
6. Re:Money for his defense by philip.paradis · 2013-10-05 16:09 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I believe you lack adequate information on how Bitcoin works. If he or someone he trusts and gave instructions to beforehand has access to another copy of the wallet, it's just as good as the original, and the coins may be transferred elsewhere and converted to other currencies, etc via the normal exchanges. I'll be surprised if the prosecuting authorities manage to figure out how to track that; they certainly won't be able to stop it. If by some chance they manage to gain access to the encrypted keys that protect the wallet in their possession, it almost certainly won't be of any value (to them) by then.
  
  --
  Write failed: Broken pipe
7. Re:Money for his defense by MrEricSir · 2013-10-05 16:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  He might need some of that hoard to pay for his defense. I don't know that going cheap on this will be in his interest.
  According to Wired he's using a public defender.
  Remember, Ulbricht was living in a shared apartment and working out of a library. If his defense is that he's not the guy running Silk Road, it would be suspicious for a man in his situation to suddenly have an expensive defense team.
  
  --
  There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
8. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:18 · Score: 0
  
  In other words, this guy is no Kim Dotcom!!
9. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:24 · Score: 0
  
  Smart crooks won't do stuff like Silk Road.
  There are plenty of other ways to make money illegally AND get away with it. Check out Wachovia, Bank of America, HSBC, Standard Chartered etc - money laundering: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-31/money-laundering-banks-still-get-a-pass-from-u-s-.html . Or MF Global - outright theft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Global#October_2011:_MF_Global_transfers_client_account_funds_to_its_own_account
  Then there are the usual ways to make lots of money unethically but legally.
10. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:45 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  When I was at the Fed, we'd just print all the money we wanted. Never had any trouble getting away with it either.
11. Re:Money for his defense by philip.paradis · 2013-10-05 17:08 · Score: 2
  
  He'll probably just let the process play out with his public defender, aiming for the lowest legal penalty possible, and promptly leave the country for a non-extraditing locale at the first opportunity. Then he'll able to recover his funds and go about his life, more or less as he wishes. There's virtually no chance of those funds being recovered by the authorities; I'd be very surprised to learn that the BTC in question are still in the wallet in question even now. Setting up contingency plans for transfers and further action, based anywhere on the planet, are simply too simple a concept to have been overlooked.
  
  --
  Write failed: Broken pipe
12. Re:Money for his defense by girlintraining · 2013-10-05 17:13 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  So, what you're saying is that Walter White did it right in Breaking Bad when he hired Saul with a rather large retainer.
  I'd have to actually turn on a TV to be able to answer that. I'm dimly aware there's some bald guy with a beard on some TV show called 'Breaking Bad' that everyone goes on about on Facebook, and that it has something to do with drugs. But beyond that, I couldn't tell you anything about the show. The only things on TV I watch are Mythbusters, Shark Week when it rolls around, How Things Work, Engineering Marvels, and similar. I used to watch the History channel, back when it actually had stuff about history on it. Now it seems to be as much about History as the Food channel is about food. I think I could probably watch it for the better part of a day before figuring out how to boil water. -_-
  Snark aside though... if this 'Walter White' guy is mass producing drugs for a TV show, the odds are very, very good that the producers have given a highly slanted perspective on how drugs are actually made and distributed, because the day to day is actually quite boring for the people involved... and they don't make as much money as you seem to think either. The drug cartels are, just like regular supra-corporate entities, screwing over their workers and wealth and power tends to be concentrated at the top. It is unlikely a single man producing his own drugs, regardless of the type of drug, could manage production, packaging, distribution, etc., and not attract the attention of these entities. And they don't react like normal businesses do to a newcomer to the market; They tend to show up and either kill you where you stand, or offer you a deal where you basically work for them for next to nothing... or they kill you where you stand.
  And all of this ignores law enforcement activity and the peripheral risks, which I'm sure are glorified and hollywooded up in the above-referenced series... but in actuality, there aren't catchy one liners, and dark meetings in alleyways or restaurants with tattooed latino guys with guns, or white guys in suits like in Batman. Conversation and plot is severely lacking in real life... it all revolves around people dying, people not wanting to die, and both sides doing whatever seems best to achieve those respective aims. The conversation, when it happens, tends to be short, to the point, and not particularly noteworthy or quotable. Something to the effect of "You mother fuck--(bang)gggrhhnnggggrrrhhhhh... *gurgle* wrrrrrrr... *wheeze* *gurgle* whyyyyyy? *gurgle* *splat*" Like I said, not particularly quotable.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
13. Re:Money for his defense by Mystakaphoros · 2013-10-05 17:23 · Score: 2
  
  He might need some of that hoard to pay for his defense. I don't know that going cheap on this will be in his interest.
  According to Wired he's using a public defender.
  Remember, Ulbricht was living in a shared apartment and working out of a library. If his defense is that he's not the guy running Silk Road, it would be suspicious for a man in his situation to suddenly have an expensive defense team.
  Maybe he could start a Kickstarter to fund... well, not his defense, because that's not a creative work, so to speak, but a DOCUMENTARY about his defense, including people who could just check by to see if he was dead yet.
14. Re:Money for his defense by Frosty+Piss · 2013-10-05 17:28 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't that exactly what "Dot Com" did?
  
  --
  If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
15. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:32 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Will be interesting to see which lawyer will step up and take cases on behalf of Europeans and other countries where purchasing pot is legal and demand the return of their clients funds as no laws where broken by their clients.
  Going to be a great cutting edge tech case for some lawyer to raise their profile.
  There is also the potential for people who opened an account, loaded up bitcoins, but never made a transaction for illegal products (though intent might get murky) however there are/were legal products that could be purchased on SilkRoad so could still get away with it....
  Thoughts about USA based law enforcement overstepping their jurisdictional grounds for non usa citizens?
  Going to be interesting to see what happens once the FBI returns the bitcoins to the market to dispose of the assets.
16. Re:Money for his defense by dcollins117 · 2013-10-05 18:09 · Score: 2
  
  Once they claim certain dollars are proceeds of illegal activity, they freeze the assets, and they will be held in trust, or held by police, until the charges are settled.
  The FBI can't get their hands on this money because Bitcoin is a decentralized currency. They have nothing to "freeze" or "hold on" to. That's the whole point of Bitcoin, actually.
17. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 18:29 · Score: 0
  
  But that is part of the game. You gut someones means and prosecute them so they can't defend themselves. That is the game the government plays.
  True, this is how the often innocent little man gets strong-armed into compromising their ideology and pleading guilty. The government doesn't actually have bottomless pockets, though. A D.A. won't be one for long if the case he's running eats millions of dollars and they still lose. If a defendant has access to millions and is willing to spend, they can also similarly tie up the governement in legal costs... I'd estimate with about $12 million a defendent can cost the government twice that and have a decent chance of buying their freedom by running up the government's legal bills, even if they are guilty as Hell.
  I sure wish someone would fix this problem... even the chances of an innocent man of humble means of being found not guilty.
18. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 18:36 · Score: 1
  
  Yawn. You 99percenters are getting tiresome. You've accomplished nothing with your pathetic hipster occupation and are reduced to living on credit and rehashing the same old BANKHURRZ R EV!L line over and over again like a broken record. It sounds like junkie talk to me.
19. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 19:03 · Score: 0
  
  That was kind of the point of the show. Not sure why you decided to criticize something you haven't even watched.
20. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 19:06 · Score: 0
  
  Bitcoins consists of bits in some computer memory. Like a hard disc or a flash drive etc.
  This memory can be sized. And destroyed.
  When last backup is destroyed, the bitcoins are detroyed.
21. Re:Money for his defense by philip.paradis · 2013-10-05 19:21 · Score: 1
  
  You're cute. Good luck seizing encrypted material that's probably replicated to fifteen servers in fifteen countries, while the servers themselves are unknown to you. Have fun, champ.
  
  --
  Write failed: Broken pipe
22. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 20:01 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Judging from what you're saying, you'd probably enjoy Breaking Bad. You're making a lot of incorrect assumptions about the way it handles its subject matter.
23. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 20:32 · Score: 2
  
  I think you would be pleasantly surprised by breaking bad.. Let's say it like this; Walter does not like to be the screwed over by any cartels.
24. Re:Money for his defense by GrandCow · 2013-10-05 20:34 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  So, what you're saying is that Walter White did it right in Breaking Bad when he hired Saul with a rather large retainer.
  I'd have to actually turn on a TV to be able to answer that. I'm dimly aware there's some bald guy with a beard on some TV show called 'Breaking Bad' that everyone goes on about on Facebook, and that it has something to do with drugs. But beyond that, I couldn't tell you anything about the show.
  You do realize that intentionally ignoring good entertainment doesn't make you some kind of hero, right? Refusing to watch live TV is just fine, lots of people don't like having commercials shoved down their throats. I'm one of those people myself, the only thing I watch live is football and Breaking Bad.
  You're missing the second half of that equation though. There are many ways to watch the show without commercials and also whenever you wish, both legal and not legal. You just come off as an idiot putting up a resistance just to make sure they can tell people they are putting up a resistance. You are making your own show, the same way Fox News does it... purposely doing something that will elicit an emotional reaction from others. Shit it even worked on me because I'm responding to you.
  It would be one thing if you didn't want to watch it based on violence or glorifying the person enabling the drug users, but you made it specifically about TV. That means you're arguing about commercials or being forced to watch at a certain time I guess.
  
  --
  "Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
25. Re:Money for his defense by Bite+The+Pillow · 2013-10-05 20:46 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The big mistake hipsters make is assuming anyone cares about how hipster they are. We were talking about encryption, virtual currencies, legal tactics, and as usual where people gather, the occasional pop culture reference.
  Back on topic, now, please.
26. Re:Money for his defense by Tom · 2013-10-05 21:48 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  That is an actual cool feature of Bitcoin - you can copy money. You can only spend it once, but you can have a backup copy of your money. Or several.
  
  --
  Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
27. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:19 · Score: 0
  
  "If his defense is that he's not the guy running Silk Road, ..."
  It was one of the other Dread Pirate Robertses.
28. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:32 · Score: 0
  
  The point of the parent is that all that is illegal, so he needs an accomplice to do it. Tough luck finding an accomplice now, after he has been busted. The point of the GP is that all this should have been done in advance, and pay lawyers preemptively with thoroughly laundered money. That would have been certainly easier than running a narcotics eBay.
29. Re:Money for his defense by ultranova · 2013-10-05 22:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Snark aside though... if this 'Walter White' guy is mass producing drugs for a TV show, the odds are very, very good that the producers have given a highly slanted perspective on how drugs are actually made and distributed, because the day to day is actually quite boring for the people involved... and they don't make as much money as you seem to think either.
  
  And you know this how? You're either making shit up to appear smart, or a genuine idiot bragging about her actual extensive experience working for a drug cartel on a public web forum where your IP can be easily traced - on a story discussing a drug bust that ultimately resulted from the accused posting on a forum, no less.
  Either way, epic fail.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
30. Re:Money for his defense by ultranova · 2013-10-05 22:52 · Score: 2
  
  Or, if you trust your memory, you could use a deterministic wallet generated from a memorized seed, such as a long enough passphrase. That way, no backups are necessary, and it's pretty much impossible to even determine which adresses are yours.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
31. Re:Money for his defense by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 23:20 · Score: 1
  
  It's really easy to seize bitcoin.
  Police just confiscates the password to the wallet (a copy of that wallet may come in handy), and has everyone else forget it. Those passwords are generally short enough to write down on a single post-it note, that can then conveniently be attached to the relevant documents.
  Come time to release the seized/frozen bitcoin, they simply hand the post-it note with password to the owner.
  Simple, isn't it? Even easier than seizing money that's in the banks, where you need to do stuff like warrants and getting the bank involved to cooperate with you.
32. Re:Money for his defense by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 23:21 · Score: 1
  
  Just out of curiousity: how do you keep those back-ups in sync, especially when you have some bitcoin, you backup them, spend some, and for whatever reason have to start using the backup copy which includes the already spent bitcoins.
33. Re:Money for his defense by RichardJenkins · 2013-10-05 23:23 · Score: 1
  
  Looking at the shows she does watch, you'd assume she doesn't finds televised fiction too stimulating.
34. Re:Money for his defense by IamTheRealMike · 2013-10-05 23:31 · Score: 2
  
  You'd have put money away and bonded lawyers so they could "spring you"? How exactly are these lawyers going to do that? Ulbricht is guilty as fuck and clearly knows it. The two criminal complaints are overflowing with evidence and that's not going to be all the Fed's have got. I have a hard time seeing how any lawyer is going to wriggle out from under all that stuff. Doesn't matter if you somehow managed to bond the best of the best ahead of time.
  Also, you seem to have overlooked the fact that the guy was poor. Given he had explicitly stated in the past that he was motivated by money, that rather implies he was afraid of converting large chunks of his Bitcoin wealth into dollar wealth, probably because he wasn't sure he could beat the ID verification and AML checks the exchanges all do these days. If a bank sees an unemployed guy who lives with flatmates suddenly start receiving enormous wires from a Bitcoin exchange, and then sending money on to law firms, that's the kind of thing that triggers them filing a "suspicious activity report" with the US Treasury. It's actually not so easy to cash out large illegal holdings of Bitcoin, you'd have to find someone to do it on your behalf who doesn't mind potentially being hit with a money laundering charge if you were to go down. That's not easy.
  That said, I'll agree that the guy was a walking cliche. The only thing unclear to me is how many criminals out there aren't - whenever we see cases like this, it always seems like the gangsters literally started speaking like a bad movie character. Is it that the movies are so accurate, or the bad guys learn how to behave by watching films?
35. Re:Money for his defense by IamTheRealMike · 2013-10-05 23:34 · Score: 1
  
  They know the outputs in the guys wallet - if that money were to suddenly start moving, it would eventually (probably quickly) have to turn up at one of the Bitcoin exchanges, given how tiny the Bitcoin economy is and how much more useful a state backed currency is (today). Those exchanges are all well known, registered with their local governments, etc. Figuring out who is trying to cash out would not be very hard.
36. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:47 · Score: 0
  
  What? The only difference is that instead of holding the money in a vault they hold it in their own wallet they transfer it to. They can even "destroy" it by sending it to a wallet and destroying any record to the credentials to access that wallet.
37. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 00:03 · Score: 0
  
  I didn't know it was so easy to offend the fans of some TV serial. All he said is that he has heard of this show but doesn't watch it, and that the usual depiction of the drug industry in TV shows is clichéd. You know what is rude? To assume everybody uses the same drugs or media as you. I stopped watching TV 20 years ago, and I don't feel like a cultural outcast or an "idiot putting up a resistance". I stopped watching TV because it bored me. Nobody has ever criticized me for that. I guess I'm glad I haven't met people like you in real life.
38. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 00:09 · Score: 0
  
  the only thing I watch live is football and Breaking Bad.
  I don't like football or TV. I must be the Antichrist in your eyes.
39. Re:Money for his defense by Rich0 · 2013-10-06 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  I believe you lack adequate information on how Bitcoin works. If he or someone he trusts and gave instructions to beforehand has access to another copy of the wallet, it's just as good as the original...
  Correct - copying, storage, and movement of bitcoins (without transferring ownership) is easy to do in a covert manner.
  
  and the coins may be transferred elsewhere and converted to other currencies, etc via the normal exchanges. I'll be surprised if the prosecuting authorities manage to figure out how to track that; they certainly won't be able to stop it.
  Every transfer of ownership (ie movement from one account/wallet to another) is publicly disclosed and completely traceable. In fact, the transfer of ownership isn't really certain until it is published by a miner. Who (in terms of account numbers) owns which bit coins is a matter of consensus, which means that everybody basically has to know everything.
  Now, what human being has access to what account numbers isn't public knowledge. However, there is a good chance that the FBI knows what account numbers Ulbricht was using. Every one of his customers basically had to transfer their money into them in order for him to make money (I don't know the details of how this was accomplished as I'm not familiar with the actual workings of the Silk Road). So, even if they don't have access to the bitcoins they probably do know what account they're in. If anybody moves them to another account then they'll know about it, and if somebody transfers the money to an exchange they'll know about that as well. Then they just call up the exchange and asked who got the money transferred to that account and they'll have banking info.
  It would be very hard to actually spend bitcoin earned from a publicly-disclosed criminal enterprise. I think Ulbricht only lasted this long because he was basically hoarding the money - if it never leaves your wallet then it is hard to figure out who has it. But then, what's the whole point if you can't actually use the money you obtain for actual goods and services?
40. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 00:42 · Score: 0
  
  While wallets do contain transactions, the important bit is the keys -- which do not change between backups. A backed up out-of-sync wallet will still have the keys you're using, so you can just rescan the block chain to get the missing transactions back in your wallet.
  You will need to do a new backup of your wallet if you add new keys to it however.
41. Re:Money for his defense by turp182 · 2013-10-06 00:55 · Score: 1
  
  And with a public defender it's more about minimizing time in prison than any guilty/not guilty court related stuff.
  Public defender = Lets seek a plea deal.
  
  --
  BlameBillCosby.com
42. Re:Money for his defense by zygotic+mitosis · 2013-10-06 01:00 · Score: 2
  
  Everyone's an armchair criminal mastermind now that Breaking Bad is done.
43. Re:Money for his defense by DanZ23 · 2013-10-06 01:14 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah when I saw the list I was like um.
  I have a bookmark to my local public TV station that lists it's 3 OTA channels: PBS, Create, and World Channel. That's pretty much all I watch unless I'm checking on local news coverage for something that's going on around here.
44. Re:Money for his defense by mysidia · 2013-10-06 01:53 · Score: 1
  
  I know this, but i am sure the feds will not allow him out of their sight: they are not stupid, if he unlocks the keys for its own use, you can bank on them having a keylogger, at which point they'll just cut him off, and use the keys to secure his BTC - -- it may even be an excuse for denying him bail; the threat that he regains access to his keys and moves his BTC out of their reach.
  If he or someone he trusts and gave instructions to beforehand has access to another copy of the wallet, it's just as good as the original
  Dude... where do you get these friends you can trust to handle $80 million for you?
  You know how fast anyone I know would have cashed me out at least a few million and fled the country, within an hour of being given access to my bitcoin wallet if I had that much: if they knew the transfer was irreversible, and it would be difficult to get authorities to do anything?
  I think you might realize "people you can trust" is a very small or zero number, for 99% of people, once sufficiently valuable easily-cheatable things become involved.
45. Re:Money for his defense by mysidia · 2013-10-06 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  if it never leaves your wallet then it is hard to figure out who has it. But then, what's the whole point if you can't actually use the money you obtain for actual goods and services?
  It's possible the money could be used to buy goods and services denominated in BTC.
  It's also possible that the $600m wallet could be separated from cash-out by numerous layers of "synthetic transactions"
  Consider a merchant that generates a new Bitcoin ID every hour, or for every spend, and gives their customers a personal randomized discount between 0% and 20%, so the exact sale price cannot be used to infer what was purchased.
  Since a new Bitcoin ID is generated for each transaction; if the merchant does $600 million in business, the merchant will not necessarily have a "single bitcoin ID" that can be traced to them --- they may have 60000000 bitcoin IDs, each containing a receive transaction of approximately $10.
  Then later, when the merchant wants to buy $1000 in resources to continue selling some things; they might create a new "Spend wallet" in that amount, through 3 layers of $10 synthetic transactions from their $10 bitcoin IDs .
  Once the number of synthetic transactions is large enough.... there becomes a question; Can anyone successfully reverse the history, and separate which transactions were synthetic from which transactions were real?
  Assuming (1) Merchants do not keep any record matching their past Bitcoin ID to a transaction --- as soon as the merchant spends all the money received at any bitcoin ID, they destroy all record of the ID and the keys.
  (2) Normal bitcoin clients get altered to do the same ---- whenever you receive money you intend to eventually spend, your bitcoin client generates new unique IDs for you, and a pool of synthetic transactions perturbed by an entropy pool, to be staged over some period of time. By the time the transaction completes; it will not be obvious which of those receiving IDs were yours, and which ones' were the merchants' --- it will not be clear if your spend to the merchant was just the next layer of synthetic transactions, or a real transaction.
46. Re:Money for his defense by Tom · 2013-10-06 02:37 · Score: 1
  
  Do not trust your memory. Both physical and mental trauma can lead to partial memory loss, and if you have significant amount of money there, both are likely part of a scenario in which the last thing you need is not getting at your money (because you need it for medical bills).
  
  --
  Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
47. Re:Money for his defense by slackergod · 2013-10-06 02:43 · Score: 2
  
  Bitcoin is a rather complex protocol (which I'm not 100% on), so the following is a bit of simplification...
  Bitcoin operates as a gigantic transaction ledger (maintained by majority concensus), which tracks the movement of bitcoins between arbitrary psuedonoymous "addresses". To create an address, you generate a ECDSA public/private key pair. The public key is the address, anyone can transfer bitcoins to it. The private key is the control, only someone who has that can move money *out* of that address. The wallet file is essentially just a list of those pairs. If you started using a backup wallet file, you'd have control over all the addresses it has private keys for. If you've emptied any of the them since that backup was made, you'll still have control over the address, there just won't be any money there :)
  There's a second (wonderfully useful) wrinkle, though. Due to the nature of ECDSA, you can derive additional public/private pairs from the initial pair, in a deterministic fashion. This allows you to have one master "seed" (e.g. a nice long passphrase) which can be used to generate unlimited public/private keys, without it being obvious that they are even connected to each other. And all you need to take control of any of them is the initial seed value. This means many bitcoin "wallets" are in fact just the seed passphrase... so if you keep it in your head and nowhere else, you have complete control over an unlimited number of addresses, without having to make *any* backups.
48. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 03:32 · Score: 0
  
  Short answer: the "wallet" just holds cryptographic keys, while the actual "coins" are stored in the distributed transaction log. When you switch over to a backup wallet, you replay the transactions and everything syncs up.
49. Re:Money for his defense by fastest+fascist · 2013-10-06 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  Quick, simple answer: The backups don't contain bitcoins. They contain encryption keys that can be used to transfer the bitcoins to another key. The Bitcoin client used checks how many bitcoins the keys it is given still control.
50. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 04:40 · Score: 0
  
  From previous postings, it seems that he/she is involved with law enforcement somehow. So clearly, they learned all of that from their extensive DARE training.
51. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 05:49 · Score: 0
  
  It would be one thing if you didn't want to watch it based on violence or glorifying the person enabling the drug users, but you made it specifically about TV. That means you're arguing about commercials or being forced to watch at a certain time I guess.
  Or that some aspect of live-action, serial, passive entertainment doesn't appeal to the GP. It's not like enjoying the same things other people do somehow makes you one of the "good people." TV just doesn't appeal for some of us -- even "good" shows.
  Personally, I'd rather be reading or playing games. Both are cheaper and engage my brain more. If that's not your thing, it's not because I'm somehow better than you or vice versa. It's just differences in taste.
  Frankly, both of you come off as snobs, denigrating the others entertainment choices for not being the same as yours.
52. Re: Money for his defense by um...+Lucas · 2013-10-06 05:57 · Score: 1
  
  People have to get this idea of him benefitting from this coin stash out of their heads. Not gonna happen.
  For one, there was no back up plan, no person he delegated responsibility to make transfers in his absence. He said as much in his forbes interview; that he delegated customer service responsibilities but it was him and only him that could manage the site or it's bitcoins. No reason to disbelieve it. Maybe early on, he had delegated but after the first employee theft (the first alledged hit), certainly he would have moved to change that , as paranoid as he seemed to be in some regards.
  Second, even if somehow he gets his sentence reduced, it'll certainly be preconditioned on his turning over his remaining proceeds. They won't say "give us your money and you're free" to his "I'm sorry, I would I forgot my key though" and reply "ok, sounds good, you're free"
  They'll instead say "were sorry you forgot; if you ever happen to remember, let us know and then we'll start arranging your release. Til then well just hold you on contempt charges since you've served your original sentence"
  No. There's no way he's being released any time in the future if there's even a question that he could access those funds. Maybe he should start praying that bjtcoin finally reaches its overdue demise so that the Feds don't think he has anything of value any longer. One day...
53. Re:Money for his defense by girlintraining · 2013-10-06 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  The big mistake hipsters make is assuming anyone cares about how hipster they are. We were talking about encryption, virtual currencies, legal tactics, and as usual where people gather, the occasional pop culture reference.
  A hipster would have said they were watching it before it was cool, not snarking about how they didn't watch it at all, and then proceeding to explain why. However, despite getting all the details wrong, you managed a remarkably good rant.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
54. Re:Money for his defense by girlintraining · 2013-10-06 06:21 · Score: 2
  
  ou do realize that intentionally ignoring good entertainment doesn't make you some kind of hero, right?
  
  You do realize that 'good entertainment' is an entirely subjective thing, whereas my explanation about why providing fictional examples to buttress a position about an actual, realworld event, was not.
  
  You just come off as an idiot putting up a resistance just to
  
  Just to what? Try and be funny and informative at the same time? Just to listen to hipsters amongst us like yourself that find the empty chattering of TV with 30% commercials dumped into your brain "entertainment" and can't understand why everybody doesn't join them so they have to mock them?
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
55. Re:Money for his defense by girlintraining · 2013-10-06 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  And you know this how? You're either making shit up to appear smart, or a genuine idiot bragging about her actual extensive experience working for a drug cartel on a public web forum where your IP can be easily traced - on a story discussing a drug bust that ultimately resulted from the accused posting on a forum, no less.
  Or option c: I have had friends who got involved in the wrong people, and helped to get them out of it, with the help of law enforcement and a lot of time at a law library where, reviewing case after case of drug busts of all varieties searching for a technicality, I may have inadvertently learned a few things as well the good old fashioned way: With primary research.
  
  Either way, epic fail.
  I could not have stated your failure any more succinctly.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
56. Re:Money for his defense by girlintraining · 2013-10-06 06:26 · Score: 0
  
  Judging from what you're saying, you'd probably enjoy Breaking Bad. You're making a lot of incorrect assumptions about the way it handles its subject matter.
  I don't think so. If there was a TV show that showed how actual drug production worked in sufficient detail, it would be shut down by the government because it would essentially be a handbook on how to do it, being delivered to millions of televisions during prime time. I'm sorry, but common sense trumps your understanding of a fictional TV show.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
57. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 06:49 · Score: 0
  
  Will be interesting to see which lawyer will step up and take cases on behalf of Europeans and other countries where purchasing pot is legal
  This is not the case in any european country. You might think about the Netherlands, Portugal or the Czech Republic. Technically it is still illegal in all three countries. This is mainly due to the stupid UN charta on drugs.
58. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 07:20 · Score: 0
  
  Every time you create a transaction your client uses a new key to send the change portion of the transaction back to. The client maintains a pool of 100 extra keys so old backups continue to work as expected until the keys that were in the pool when the backup was created are all used up. How long that is depends on how many transactions and input addresses you create.
  People have lost coins thinking their backup would work forever.
59. Re:Money for his defense by mysidia · 2013-10-06 07:41 · Score: 1
  
  They have nothing to "freeze" or "hold on" to.
  Within 15 minutes of a BTC spend for the account, the place associated with the source ip will probably be surrounded with black vans, helicopters, and heavily armed quasi-military law enforcement, and the spend will get cancelled by killing and seizing peer nodes, before the message propagates.
60. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 08:04 · Score: 0
  
  I may be missing something here, but all the guy has to do is give his lawyer a pass-phrase and a copy of his encrypted wallet, and there will be an $80 million party in court, right? He might turn out to be smarter than you think. Maybe even smarter than you.
61. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 08:08 · Score: 0
  
  You don't have to, that's the beauty of it. You just set up a new bitcoin installation with a backup of the wallet file, and you download the complete block chain from the bitcoin network. Your wallet only holds your bank account numbers so to speak, but the 'bank' is the block chain, which is the P2P controlled part of the system and will therefor live on happily without you connecting to it for a while.
62. Re:Money for his defense by ralphaostrander · 2013-10-06 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  Really we dont know that yet he could have a clean record in which case he will do some time leave the country and be in good shape.
63. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 09:47 · Score: 0
  
  Bitcoins consists of bits in some computer memory. Like a hard disc or a flash drive etc.
  This memory can be sized. And destroyed.
  When last backup is destroyed, the bitcoins are detroyed.
  You probably meant bitcoin *wallets* consist of bits you can seize and destroy.
  Otherwise, let me fix that for you: "When every last bitcoin client NODE is destroyed, the bitcoins are destroyed." Otherwise access to the multi-gigabyte transaction chain and the correct bitcoin wallet will allow you to transact.
64. Re: Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 09:51 · Score: 0
  
  So why go on silk road when it's available from tesco?
65. Re:Money for his defense by Rich0 · 2013-10-06 14:33 · Score: 1
  
  It's possible the money could be used to buy goods and services denominated in BTC.
  Sure, but then the government will know who you bought those services from (unless they also are taking steps to conceal their identity - something they have no incentive to do), and then agents will just ask them for information about you. Most meaningful services require the person providing the service to know something about the person they're providing the service to.
  
  It's also possible that the $600m wallet could be separated from cash-out by numerous layers of "synthetic transactions"
  Not sure I buy that.
  
  Since a new Bitcoin ID is generated for each transaction; if the merchant does $600 million in business, the merchant will not necessarily have a "single bitcoin ID" that can be traced to them --- they may have 60000000 bitcoin IDs, each containing a receive transaction of approximately $10.
  Completely plausible. Usually a new account is created for any transaction anyway, so that you know that payment was made for that specific transaction. It would be typical to move that money into a more centralized account, but that does not need to happen.
  
  Then later, when the merchant wants to buy $1000 in resources to continue selling some things; they might create a new "Spend wallet" in that amount, through 3 layers of $10 synthetic transactions from their $10 bitcoin IDs .
  The extra layers do nothing to help. If the government is watching a particular account, then they'll spot the first transfer, and then they'll monitor that account and spot the second transfer, and so on. The ENTIRE history of every account and their transactions is published, permanently. Moving the shells around doesn't really do much in the age of computers, especially when every movement is logged in a database.
  
  Once the number of synthetic transactions is large enough.... there becomes a question; Can anyone successfully reverse the history, and separate which transactions were synthetic from which transactions were real?
  You don't care which ones are real - you just care about every account that the money touched. You then monitor them all until you link one to an account you know the owner of, and then you can start tracing backwards in the real world.
  
  Assuming (1) Merchants do not keep any record matching their past Bitcoin ID to a transaction --- as soon as the merchant spends all the money received at any bitcoin ID, they destroy all record of the ID and the keys.
  Merchants interested in hiding their activities might do this. However, legitimate businesses probably would not. If you are a bank and the FBI shows up at your door, you could offer them a copious supply of logs, or you could tell them that you do not keep records. The first makes them happy, and the second does not. If you don't keep logs, the main decision you leave the investigative team is whether they want to merely shut your operation down, or if they think you're actually involved in which case they should also prosecute. Neither are appealing to a legitimate business out to make money. As a result, businesses tend to keep plenty of records.
  
  (2) Normal bitcoin clients get altered to do the same ---- whenever you receive money you intend to eventually spend, your bitcoin client generates new unique IDs for you, and a pool of synthetic transactions perturbed by an entropy pool, to be staged over some period of time. By the time the transaction completes; it will not be obvious which of those receiving IDs were yours, and which ones' were the merchants' --- it will not be clear if your spend to the merchant was just the next layer of synthetic transactions, or a real transaction.
  The FBI doesn't need to trace every account to an owner. T
66. Re:Money for his defense by ultranova · 2013-10-06 14:44 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Or option c: I have had friends who got involved in the wrong people, and helped to get them out of it, with the help of law enforcement and a lot of time at a law library where, reviewing case after case of drug busts of all varieties searching for a technicality, I may have inadvertently learned a few things as well the good old fashioned way: With primary research.
  
  Or option d: You made shit up earlier, and are now making up more shit to avoid admitting that. And the rest of your posts don't really suggest you have the capability of learning law on the fly. And even if you did, law enforcement isn't exactly famous for helping people get out of drug-related charges, or helping them research technicalities.
  Friend Occam, what do you say?
  
  I could not have stated your failure any more succinctly.
  
  Losing to a non-native speaker of your language in eloquence of expression is not exactly something to brag about, now is it?
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
67. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 15:55 · Score: 0
  
  AllyMcBealInTraining
68. Re:Money for his defense by mysidia · 2013-10-06 16:02 · Score: 1
  
  Merchants interested in hiding their activities might do this. However, legitimate businesses probably would not. If you are a bank and the FBI shows up at your door, you could offer them a copious supply of logs, or you could tell them that you do not keep records.
  Legitimate businesses are concerned about the privacy and security of their customers. Banks are required to keep certain records, but other businesses only need to keep the records required for accounting.
  As long as the business keeps the lawful minimum records, the FBI cannot shut down their legal business, without a court order. They can record cash amounts, without necessarily recording any Bitcoin IDs or IP addresses.
  In the real world, there are plenty of places you can pay cash, and the date, time, amount of cash you paid and the thing you bought is the only record they'll keep.
  What do you think happens when Bitcoin payment terminals start appearing at stores?
  ---
  You don't care which ones are real - you just care about every account that the money touched. You then monitor them all until you link one to an account you know the owner of, and then you can start tracing backwards in the real world.
  If every bitcoin user is generating a new Bitcoin ID to receive every spend, then the money never touches a "known" ID; since every ID it arrives at is "brand new".
  It's very possible the BTC could be used to obtain virtual goods or online services, without a "real world known ID" ever involved.
  The virtual goods or online services might be received, without the merchant ever gathering and keeping any details about the buyer.
  The virtual goods or online services might be convertible to real cash indirectly; for example.... use BTC to buy Facebook/Twitter followers, other methods of using BTC indirectly to get cash by generating business, instead of selling BTC for cash.
  There may be complicated arrangements there certain people are paid for the virtual service of receiving a virtual good, or paid a commission to act as a sender or to act as a receiver in a "blind handoff".
  There are plenty of ways of disposing BTC, which do not necessarily provide a path that could be reversed from real-life
  Presumably: the illicit user will buy all services using BTC, and only buy products/services that are virtual, that they can get without revealing their identity to the seller.
69. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 18:49 · Score: 0
  
  I enjoyed Breaking Bad and I don't even own a TV.
70. Re:Money for his defense by fredprado · 2013-10-06 18:50 · Score: 1
  
  You are completely wrong here. You just defined Breaking Bad.
71. Re: Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 21:22 · Score: 0
  
  after all, if you haven't tried methamphetamine how do you know that you won't like it?
72. Re:Money for his defense by Rich0 · 2013-10-06 23:21 · Score: 1
  
  As long as the business keeps the lawful minimum records, the FBI cannot shut down their legal business, without a court order.
  Sure, which is why the FBI always obtains court orders.
  
  If every bitcoin user is generating a new Bitcoin ID to receive every spend, then the money never touches a "known" ID; since every ID it arrives at is "brand new".
  Generating an account number used to store bitcoin is free. Generating bitcoins are expensive, and moving a bitcoin from one account to another costs a token amount (today - that is subject to market forces). Every bitcoin has a history of every account number it has ever belonged to. So, if a bitcoin is ever in a particular account, then it can be followed to every other account it touches. The FBI just needs to hand the criminal enterprise some bitcoins and they can follow that money anyplace it goes (they know which bitcoins they spent there).
  
  It's very possible the BTC could be used to obtain virtual goods or online services, without a "real world known ID" ever involved.
  What kinds of services are you thinking of? And what is the point of being a drug kingpin if you can't even afford a car? Are you going to run the entire enterprise just so that you can put your code name up in banner ads and such? Also, very few services operate anonymously.
  
  The virtual goods or online services might be convertible to real cash indirectly; for example.... use BTC to buy Facebook/Twitter followers, other methods of using BTC indirectly to get cash by generating business, instead of selling BTC for cash.
  As soon as you start buying banner ads for your bitcoins, the FBI will ask the ad agency what ads are being bought. If they don't have records they'll just get an order requiring them to collect records on all your future transactions. Most companies will just help out without an order - most companies don't exist to further the libertarian paradise you seem to want.
  
  Presumably: the illicit user will buy all services using BTC, and only buy products/services that are virtual, that they can get without revealing their identity to the seller.
  Just what are these virtual services that criminals are flocking to buy but lack the money to obtain? When I watch movies about gangsters I see guys with guns, cars, fancy houses, etc. I don't see guys hiding in their basements accumulating a fortune in domain names/etc.
  You need to consider why people take up crime in the first place. They don't do it just for the satisfaction of having done it.
73. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-07 02:10 · Score: 0
  
  Sounds like you reiterated your parent's post. If those "unknown servers" are blown up/destroyed... the parent is telling me the bitcoin is lost. Your post seems to be combative with the "champ" comment. Are you saying the parent is wrong?
  Bitcoins ARE just bits, whether in memory or hard drive. Bitcoins ARE subject to being lost/deleted/destoryed... it has happened. Backups are the proper way to handle your bitcoins. Even then, bitcoins CAN be lost as with ANY data. /me shrugs
74. Re: Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-07 04:33 · Score: 0
  
  Variety is the spice of life?
75. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-07 04:54 · Score: 0
  
  ... wait, are you implying that the produces do not give a highly slanted perspective? You do realize that television tends to glamourize everything, right? Why would girlintraining need to be either making stuff up or an idiot actually making drugs? Isn't it normal to assume that television glamourizes the topic shown?
  Most science isn't as explosive as Mythbusters.
  Most police work isn't as high-paced as Law & Order.
  Most medicine isn't as intense as House.
  Is Breaking Bad so accurately produced that the perspective given is NOT slanted?
76. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-07 04:59 · Score: 0
  
  Bank of America was known to foreclose on houses that had their mortgage paid off. Kinda falls under the unethical realm.
  Try to troll harder next time. Everyone deserves a second chance.
77. Re:Money for his defense by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-07 07:24 · Score: 0
  
  It doesn't matter if they have the bitcoins or not. They just need to tell everyone that they know that bitcoins #xxx, #yyy, and #zzz were involved in the drug trade and anyone who holds or spends them is an accessory. They can even maintain a database of legally troubled bitcoins. They could try to do the same with paper money, but people don't routinely record and check the serial numbers against a database, the way they do with bitcoins.
  In fact, they could even maintain a database of numbers that aren't bitcoins but the USG says that they're legal tender, and in the US, they'd be legal tender.
78. Re: Money for his defense by philip.paradis · 2013-10-07 20:49 · Score: 1
  
  For one, there was no back up plan, no person he delegated responsibility to make transfers in his absence. He said as much in his forbes interview; that he delegated customer service responsibilities but it was him and only him that could manage the site or it's bitcoins. No reason to disbelieve it. Maybe early on, he had delegated but after the first employee theft (the first alledged hit), certainly he would have moved to change that , as paranoid as he seemed to be in some regards.
  You continue to make the assumption that he had no backup plan, and you offer (perhaps understandably, as you're not inside his head) no supporting evidence aside from statements on his part that any sane person would make, regardless of the truth of those statements. I've known a couple of guys who got in some trouble and had seven figures to lose, and be assured they both had contingency plans despite their pleas to the contrary. You aren't privy to his personal network of relationships; stop pretending you are. You shouldn't assume getting burned by one employee equates to never "hiring" again. I was once burned to the tune of USD $40K by an employee, which was not a small sum of money for me. I didn't stop hiring, but I did get smarter about it.
  
  Second, even if somehow he gets his sentence reduced, it'll certainly be preconditioned on his turning over his remaining proceeds. They won't say "give us your money and you're free" to his "I'm sorry, I would I forgot my key though" and reply "ok, sounds good, you're free"
  Aside from a fundamental misunderstanding of how scenarios on this level typically play out (they don't actually care about his money; they care much more about who he can help them grab to further pad their resumes), you make the mistake of assuming he'll be convicted and sentenced to anything more than a decade in prison. Conviction is uncertain, anything more than ten years is unlikely. Most men can do ten years with the knowledge that they have a fortune waiting on the other side, as long as they're smart about how they conduct themselves following release. Again, he wouldn't be the first guy to play it smart in this regard.
  
  No. There's no way he's being released any time in the future if there's even a question that he could access those funds. Maybe he should start praying that bjtcoin finally reaches its overdue demise so that the Feds don't think he has anything of value any longer. One day...
  Once again, the people prosecuting him don't give two shits about Bitcoin. Think about that for a while.
  
  --
  Write failed: Broken pipe
79. Re:Money for his defense by metrix007 · 2013-10-08 17:18 · Score: 1
  
  For someone so critical of so much TV, I find it funny one of the few things you deem worthy to watch is Mythbusters.
  This explains where you have obtained your poor understanding of science.
  
  --
  If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
80. Re:Money for his defense by metrix007 · 2013-10-08 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  Your arrogance is astounding.
  While Breaking Bad doesn't show the intricate details of manufacturing crystal meth, it does accurately show the reactions of law enforcement and the cartels when a new player is in town, and it is genius in how the protagonist managed to skirt the odds.
  But sure, just keep being pretentious thinking your watching better TV, which consists of sharks and guys blowing stuff up while pretending to be scientists.
  
  --
  If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
If he has to sell 600K bitcoins all at once by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:04 · Score: 1, Insightful

He might be selling each bitcoin at $5 apiece, since there isn't that much liquidity.
1. Re:If he has to sell 600K bitcoins all at once by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 21:54 · Score: 0
  
  Personally I would be looking forward to it.
  DAT DROP. It could only go up from there, money-wise.
The Future by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:09 · Score: 0

The future of Bitcoin Users
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by paulsnx2 · 2013-10-05 15:10 · Score: 1

If he has secured his private keys, then nobody can touch his Bitcoins. Not the NSA, FBI, CIA...
If he has the key in some obvious place, well, he is toast. But if it has been this long, I'd guess he secured is stuff.
Restitution? by AA1 · 2013-10-05 15:14 · Score: 1

To whom? Who has he harmed that deserves restitution simply by doing something the government does not like?
1. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:23 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  You think all the roofies and heroin bought on silk road were consumed by the buyer?
2. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:47 · Score: 1
  
  To whom? Who has he harmed that deserves restitution simply by doing something the government does not like?
  The person he hired a hitman to kill?
3. Re:Restitution? by AA1 · 2013-10-05 16:06 · Score: 1
  
  Well since the "hitman" was an undercover agent, and the target was not actually tortured and killed, I'll repeat myself. Who was actually, personally harmed as a direct result of his actions?
4. Re:Restitution? by HJED · 2013-10-05 16:27 · Score: 1
  
  Do you have a citation for that, I haven't seen that in any of the news I've read on this.
  
  --
  null
5. Re:Restitution? by AA1 · 2013-10-05 16:37 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, here.
6. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:48 · Score: 0
  
  Well since the "hitman" was an undercover agent, and the target was not actually tortured and killed, I'll repeat myself. Who was actually, personally harmed as a direct result of his actions?
  Do you seriously believe this non-sense? He intended to have someone killed. Fortunately, the feds do a good job of stopping these wackos.
7. Re:Restitution? by dugancent · 2013-10-05 17:01 · Score: 2
  
  It's attempted murder, and both parties can be charged, if one party wasn't an agent. It doesn't matter if the person was harmed or not.
  
  --
  SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
8. Re:Restitution? by ShanghaiBill · 2013-10-05 17:01 · Score: 1
  
  He intended to have someone killed.
  Do you understand what "restitution" is? It is compensation for actual harm. If he intended to kill someone, but didn't actually harm anyone, then no restitution is needed.
9. Re:Restitution? by Pseudonym+Authority · 2013-10-05 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, it's just attempted murder then. Well since he failed, he shouldn't be punished.
10. Re:Restitution? by AA1 · 2013-10-05 17:12 · Score: 2
  
  Who said he shouldn't be punished? Of course he should be punished, and he will be. Restitution, however, is a financial payment from the criminal to the victim to compensate them for harm caused them during the commission of a crime. Nobody was actually harmed, therefore nobody is entitled to restitution.
11. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:40 · Score: 0
  
  Citation
12. Re: Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 18:41 · Score: 0
  
  They make prisoners pay for their incarceration in some states, why not make Ulbricht pay for his prosecution, assuming it's successful. After all, criminal prosecution is a burden on us all. We should be able to extract monetary damages from the guilty. Of course it would be easier to invoke RICO and confiscate all assets derived from such a conspiratorial enterprise constructed to avoid taxation, import/export laws and FDA regulation, not to mention the Boy Scout's motto.
  My bet is that he winds up with the Uighrs in Gitmo.
13. Re:Restitution? by PCM2 · 2013-10-05 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  Do you understand what "restitution" is? It is compensation for actual harm. If he intended to kill someone, but didn't actually harm anyone, then no restitution is needed.
  He paid someone $80,000 for the torture and murder of a federal witness. The government tends to frown on that sort of thing. But I supposed to you that's a "victimless crime," because the person he paid was an undercover agent and nobody was actually tortured or murdered.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
14. Re: Restitution? by JesseMcDonald · 2013-10-05 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  ... why not make Ulbricht pay for his prosecution, assuming it's successful. After all, criminal prosecution is a burden on us all. We should be able to extract monetary damages from the guilty.
  Criminal prosecution is the choice of the prosecutor, not damage caused by the criminal; as such, it is the prosecutor's responsibility to pay for it. When you harm someone, deliberately or otherwise, and force them to go to court rather than voluntarily making amends, you cause even more damage which must be made whole. The same does not apply to retaliatory punishments, however justified.
  If you're upset that punishment is occurring at the taxpayer's expense, I suggest you stop treating it as a function of the state and leave it up to the victim whether to pursue some form of retaliation—within the realm of a proportional response, naturally—at their own expense. After all, the victim is the only one with the right to retaliation in the first place. The choice of whether to exercise that right is up to the victim, not the state.
  
  --
  "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
15. Re: Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 21:15 · Score: 0
  
  That would never happen.
  The government would have to give up their ridiculous crusade against drugs.
16. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:11 · Score: 0
  
  He have harmed the people the government is (supposedly) protecting.
  For one, he have likely not paid taxes on the income, taxes which could help pay for infrastruture and all those other things being negcleted because in USA freedom is more inportant than anything, including adhering to agreed laws (like paying taxes on income).
  This is infact a problem with bitcoin itself - people consider easy tax-evasion a feature. I am all for people spending money anonymously - but if you do not pay the taxes, i hope you are not among those complaining about the government, because the government is here for the rest of us (the paying customers) to catch you (the thiefing bastard) and make you pay your fair share in return for using your fair share of the gain (public roads dont build themself for free for example).
  This is not a personal freedom issue, it has vicitims (society) unlike the kid smoking a joint in his room, who really are not harming anyone and if he could buy the weed legally (including sales tax) would probably do so. This is a multimillion dollar income illegal "company".
17. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:15 · Score: 0
  
  That is stupid logic. Anything sold with age-restrictions is exactly the same. You think all the alchol sold to adults are consumed by adults? Well no. In that case why dont we ban it and lock up those alchohol pushers?
18. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:21 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, all his profits are currently sitting offshore. You see, he coincidentally had to paid $80 million in royalty fees to Silk Road Intellectual Property Holdings (Ireland) Ltd for the use of the Silk Road logo and technology, which unfortunately meant no net US profit. And he's damn well not paying any taxes until he gets a tax holiday! What, you think he's made of money, just barely breaking even as he is?
19. Re: Restitution? by Jeremi · 2013-10-06 01:41 · Score: 1
  
  I suggest you stop treating it as a function of the state and leave it up to the victim whether to pursue some form of retaliationâ"within the realm of a proportional response, naturallyâ"at their own expense. After all, the victim is the only one with the right to retaliation in the first place.
  This would only work in cases where the victim has the resources to mount an effective response. Many victims are too poor, too busy, too scared, too injured, or too dead to do so, and so unless the state does the prosecution for them, the result would be that many crimes could be committed with de facto impunity.
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
20. Re:Restitution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 09:27 · Score: 0
  
  He paid someone $80,000 for the torture and murder of a federal witness. The government tends to frown on that sort of thing. But I supposed to you that's a "victimless crime," because the person he paid was an undercover agent and nobody was actually tortured or murdered.
  No one said anything about it being legal or moral or expectable. Do you know what restitution means? You can't have restitution without someone being harmed. Paying a government agent to kill someone doesn't harm anybody. Obviously. Who do you pay restitution to?
Disappearing Bitcoins by ndogg · 2013-10-05 15:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

This brings up an interesting thought. Since the total number of Bitcoins is fixed, and if these coins seem to now be irrecoverable, what happens to the currency when it disappears into encrypted black holes like this?

--
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
1. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by ThatAblaze · 2013-10-05 15:23 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  That's easy: The value of each bitcoin in circulation increases.
2. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by ndogg · 2013-10-05 15:39 · Score: 1
  
  That seems obvious, but what are users going to do if all of it disappears behind these encrypted black holes?
  
  --
  // file: mice.h
  #include "frickin_lasers.h"
3. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by True+Vox · 2013-10-05 15:50 · Score: 1
  
  Well, the coins they already have will increase in value, and they'll continue to use smaller & smaller decimals of BTC. It's currently divisible out to 8(?) places, AFAIK, but I believe that fact doesn't prevent it from going even smaller as long as it's coded in.
  
  --
  "Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
4. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by whoever57 · 2013-10-05 15:57 · Score: 2
  
  That's easy: The value of each bitcoin in circulation increases.
  
  Only if people know that the bitcoins are irrevocably lost.
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
5. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Richy_T · 2013-10-05 16:01 · Score: 1
  
  There's not much chance of *all* of it disappearing it that way and the currency is infinitely divisible if required. There will always be enough.
6. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Entropy98 · 2013-10-05 16:05 · Score: 1
  
  That's easy: The value of each bitcoin in circulation increases.
  Only if people know that the bitcoins are irrevocably lost.
  If the government prints tons of new money the value of it goes down, even if they don't tell anyone. Wouldn't this work in reverse?
7. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  People do not have to know it is irrevocably lost, people do not even have to know that any of this happened. This is the most basic concept in economics.
8. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by girlintraining · 2013-10-05 16:39 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  There's not much chance of *all* of it disappearing it that way and the currency is infinitely divisible if required. There will always be enough.
  Yeah... because we've never had problems with adding a crapton of floating point and extra decimal places to math with computers before. (rolls eyes) Please. Some of the greatest financial scams of our time were based on rounding and floating point errors. The idea that the currency can be "infinitely divisible" is not a selling point, it's a structural weakness.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
9. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:45 · Score: 0
  
  Same as what happens when you throw a dollar in the toilet
10. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:07 · Score: 0
  
  Because there's NO way to represent a floating point number with infinite precision on a computer, right?
11. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Pseudonym+Authority · 2013-10-05 17:17 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah... because we've never had problems with adding a crapton of floating point and extra decimal places to math with computers before. (rolls eyes)
  Congratulations on another wonderful display of ignorance! A Grade-A+++ girlintraining post! This isn't a weather simulator where the numbers are going to be raised to the hundredth power, it's basic, linear algebra here.
  
  Some of the greatest financial scams of our time were based on rounding and floating point errors.
  Really? Name one that didn't just collect tiny pieces at a time but actually used floating point errors. Besides that, since the ledger is public and the protocol (and Bitcoin is technically a protocol, not a piece of software, if you even know what that means) standardized, then it would be handled uniformly and that won't be an issue.
  
  The idea that the currency can be "infinitely divisible" is not a selling point, it's a structural weakness.
  Explain. And don't just shit out a wall of text that evades the subject like you usually do.
12. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:25 · Score: 0
  
  Fool, troll, or both?
13. Re: Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 19:15 · Score: 0
  
  No one misses a few semoleans as long as there is enough to facilitate the necessary level of trade among the natives. It's the relative desirability of one currency vis-a-vis any other currency because of its acceptance in its function as a means of exchange that determines its value. That's why it's more important that the USD remained the standard currency by which oil was traded and the threat to this status has greater effect than the fact that the Fed is dluting the money supply by $85 billion each month.
14. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by lxs · 2013-10-05 19:17 · Score: 1
  
  The deflation occurred when DPR took the coins out of circulation by putting them in his private stash. As soon as someone starts dumping those coins then BTC value will drop. Removing the risk of this happening may increase confidence in the value of the currency a little but not catastrophically. 600000 BTC is about 5% of the total amount of BTC at this time. Now someone schooled in econometrics can probably calculate the effects of this looming event.
15. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by mwvdlee · 2013-10-05 19:18 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  You've never seen code at a financial institute, have you?
  Yes, there have been scams based on rounding decimals. No, these were not due to rounding errors or any other kind of technical error with floating point calculations, but due to the fact that currencies display a limited amount of decimal places whereas some calculations may produce more decimal places. Instead of rounding off and dropping the difference, the scam was to round off and transfer any positive difference to the thief's account. The problem is fixed nowadays by rounding off to the advantage of the customer at a relatively minor loss to the banks; there simply isn't any positive difference to transfer.
  FYI, I've worked some 12 years at various banks and had to deal with these rounding issues. These fixes were put in place decades before I started my carreer.
  The "greatest financial scams of our time" are based on social engineering, not technical engineering.
  
  --
  Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
16. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 20:16 · Score: 0
  
  Girl in training willingly has his dick cut off.
17. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Gabest · 2013-10-05 20:36 · Score: 1
  
  Currencies aren't processed as floats, there are special number formats with fixed number of decimals for databases and programming languages.
18. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Patch86 · 2013-10-05 21:18 · Score: 2
  
  So it's a deflationary pressure, then? That is, if I have 10 Bitcoins today and do absolutely nothing with them, will they be worth more tomorrow (because they now represent a larger proportion of the overall population)?
  Deflation is, in economics, generally considered A Very Bad Thing. I believe that's why Bitcoin was designed to have an inflationary pressure built right in (the mining process should continually increase the pool, making every Bitcoin worth slightly less over time).
19. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by ThatAblaze · 2013-10-05 21:29 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Deflation just makes the idea of investing seem absurd. That may be no way to run a country, but it's a perfectly fine way to run a sub-currency. Collectables behave exactly like bitcoins, and they haven't destroyed the economy yet.
20. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 21:48 · Score: 0
  
  In the case of bitcoins being lost in the void, it's assumed that there will always remain a certain number of bitcoins in circulation that will service the millions of traders around the world. It's assumed that people of the world won't lose this critical number of bitcoins needed for all the traders. In my opinion, I would guess that the loss of btc will not be a problem for at least a century.
21. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Tom · 2013-10-05 21:51 · Score: 1
  
  So far, it didn't happen. Bitcoin value is almost exactly where it was before his arrest (though it did move quite a bit in the days immediately following).
  
  --
  Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
22. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:07 · Score: 0
  
  Not even "in the days", more like "in the hours". Check that spike in trades at 6pm Oct 2, when the news hit the Web - somebody made a pretty dollar (or a pretty Bitcoin) on people panicking, by midnight trades dropped to usual level and by 6pm Oct 3 it already more or less stabilized at $130.
23. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:14 · Score: 0
  
  But how does the system know it is gone and just not being used?
  Is there an age to each coin or something? Or wallet?
  Or is it just another meta thing where the market judges it?
24. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by diamondmagic · 2013-10-05 22:25 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Economists regard price deflation as bad: That's when costs for businesses and debtors go up, without a corresponding increase in revenue. Businesses fail left and right under this situation.
  Bitcoins, not now, but in the future, will have the property of monetary deflation, which is good: Prices go down uniformly and predictably.
  The key thing to keep in mind is that, if the future effects are predictable, that'll be reflected in the price now, minus interest for the price of time.
  (Monetary inflation may be predictable in many cases, but it's still damaging because it's not uniform: It benefits banks and the politically well connected with new money, letting them bid up prices, effectively stealing wealth from savings and those on fixed incomes.)
  
  --
  Wonder what the public key field is for?
25. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by ultranova · 2013-10-05 23:07 · Score: 2
  
  Deflation is, in economics, generally considered A Very Bad Thing.
  
  Some economists think so, yes. Some think the exact opposite. As usual, there's too many variables in economics to isolate the effects of either inflation or deflation, so everyone can rest assured their pet theories can never be proven wrong.
  
  I believe that's why Bitcoin was designed to have an inflationary pressure built right in (the mining process should continually increase the pool, making every Bitcoin worth slightly less over time).
  
  The mining process will only produce a finite number of Bitcoins (21,000,000), half of which have been produced. The mining reward is already only half of what it used to be, and half again, and again, and again, towards nothing.
  And of course even a fixed-speed mining process would eventually cause deflation, because economic growth is exponential and will eventually overtake any linear process.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
26. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by allo · 2013-10-05 23:12 · Score: 1
  
  It is not fixed. When these Bitcoins are lost forever, they can be mined again. The amount is only fixed, when there is no loss of existing BTC. Or the other way round: the amount of existing BTC is fixed, not of mining BTC. So if there is a loss, there is a chance to mine again.
27. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 23:27 · Score: 1
  
  It only adds to the strong delationary pressure on this currency by more and more people starting to use it (and less and less new coins coming into existence as mining slows down, which is intentional). So demand increases much faster than supply (it seems bitcoin is actually gaining traction here and there), pushing up the value of bitcoin.
  This obviously means it's getting more and more interesting to buy and hold them (use as investment rather than currency), making this effect stronger. Such large chunks of bitcoin potentially disappearing (this 600k is about 5% of all current bitcoin in existence!) is adding to that significantly.
  It'd be good if someone can create a digital currency that's as secure and anonymous as bitcoin, but where it is possible to create more currency the way banks do in the traditional currencies.
28. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 23:31 · Score: 1
  
  Your bitcoin today may be worth $80.
  If bitcoin deflates, tomorrow it may be worth $81.
  If bitcoin deflates faster than inflation in your currency, it's a money maker for you. If it deflates faster than the stock market rises (over the long run stock markets always go up - the main question is: how much?) it makes a great investment even.
  And before you know it the currency is all being hoarded, there is no liquidity to use it for actual payments, and you've got yourself a de-facto pyramid scheme.
  Whether it will destroy the economy depends just on how high the value may go, and how fast and how much it may fall.
29. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 23:35 · Score: 0
  
  it mainly means that the bitcoin you hold in your account may suddenly jump in value by a factor 10 if the world decides to move the decimal point one more position. Now how's that for a return on investment?!
30. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by IamTheRealMike · 2013-10-05 23:35 · Score: 1
  
  It's not infinitely divisible. Each coins is divisible into 100 million subunits. On the wire value is represented with an int64.
31. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:40 · Score: 1
  
  Deflation just makes the idea of investing seem absurd. That may be no way to run a country, but it's a perfectly fine way to run a sub-currency. Collectables behave exactly like bitcoins, and they haven't destroyed the economy yet.
  There was deflation all throughout the industrial revolution and there were plenty of investments during that time. So that theory has been proven wrong. Deflation occurs due to increases in productivity.
32. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:49 · Score: 0
  
  This is why bitcoins are great for certain purposes but actually adopting it as a currency for a country like the U.S. or for the Eurozone is a terrible idea (as you remove one of your strongest economic controls).
33. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:58 · Score: 0
  
  I don't think this is right.
34. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by turp182 · 2013-10-06 00:59 · Score: 1
  
  What happens if/when dedicated hardware (ASIC I believe, might have the order wrong) the mining of bitcoins becomes a losing effort (energy costs exceed the value)?
  Will 21 million Bitcoints ever be produced? How expensive will the last ones be?
  
  --
  BlameBillCosby.com
35. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Jeremi · 2013-10-06 01:13 · Score: 2
  
  it mainly means that the bitcoin you hold in your account may suddenly jump in value by a factor 10 if the world decides to move the decimal point one more position. Now how's that for a return on investment?!
  Yes, that is the kind of return on investment that holders of the Zimbabwean dollar often enjoyed. That's why Zimbabweans are all so rich. ;^)
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
36. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Jeremi · 2013-10-06 01:21 · Score: 1
  
  It is not fixed. When these Bitcoins are lost forever, they can be mined again.
  I don't see how this could be true without introducing a potential double-spending problem. The issue is that the Bitcoin system has no way of 'knowing' the the Bitcoins are really lost (as opposed to just sitting unused in someone's wallet for a long time). If a Bitcoin miner was allowed to re-mine the unused coins, and then the coins' original owner finally came back from his 30-year trip to Timbuktu and tried to spend said coins, then we'd have a situation where two people "own" the same coins, and either one of them would be refused, or coins would be double-spent. I don't think either of those options would be considered acceptable.
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
37. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:23 · Score: 0
  
  So you mean to say bitcoins I kept safe for my grand-daughter's wedding will some day be "mined again" and used by someone unrelated?..
  It seems you didn't think it through. There is no way to tell whether Bitcoins are lost or just kept under virtual mattress.
38. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by petermgreen · 2013-10-06 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  The chances of that happening are negligable. The number of bitcoins (which are very finely divisible and could likely be made more divisible if needed) lost each year is likely to be roughly proportional to the number circulating. Assuming the community size stays roughly the same this will cause gradual deflation but nothing earth shattering compared to other pressures on bitcoin.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
39. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by petermgreen · 2013-10-06 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  Deflation is, in economics, generally considered A Very Bad Thing.
  It is by mainstream economists.
  Others see inflation as a form of "theft" or "tax" taking spending power away from those who decide to keep hold of their money rather than investing it.
  
  I believe that's why Bitcoin was designed to have an inflationary pressure built right in (the mining process should continually increase the pool, making every Bitcoin worth slightly less over time).
  The designers of bitcoin were obviously pretty rabidly anti-inflation. Yes mining rewards do exist but they are seen as merely a bootstrapping mechanism to distribute the coins initially and to provide miners with some incentive to mine in the early stages set to taper off over time. The total bitcoins in circulation will max out at about double the current level.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
40. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by petermgreen · 2013-10-06 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  Mining difficulty adjusts based on the number of active miners. So if miners give up because they no longer find it profitable to mine the difficulty will go down. Of course this DOES make the network more vulnerable to a "51% attack".
  Note that miners get paid in two ways, there is the "mining reward" which creates bitcoins out of thin air and tapers off over time and there are transaction fees paid by clients for getting their transactions included in a block. The theory is that transaction fees will keep mining power at a level where the bitcoin network is reasonablly hard to attack after the mining rewards stop. Whether it actually will or not only time will tell.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
41. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by fastest+fascist · 2013-10-06 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  So instead of paying 5 EUR for my groceries just now, I paid 500 cents?! That's highway robbery!
42. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 04:11 · Score: 0
  
  This is not correct.
43. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 04:50 · Score: 0
  
  Like gold, silver and bronze and cooper? Before the colonization of america their value had only gone up, and still we had 2000+ years of roman kingdom, republic and empire using some of these metals as currency. So you're saying that our pitiful 100+ years society is going to fall because of deflationary currency?
44. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 05:22 · Score: 0
  
  The mining process will only produce a finite number of Bitcoins (21,000,000), half of which have been produced. The mining reward is already only half of what it used to be, and half again, and again, and again, towards nothing.
  However, if at some point mining becomes totally non-viable, eventually 'lost" bitcoins and value increases will make it viable again; some sort of equilibrium will probably occur as 21,000,000 is approached more and more slowly.
45. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 05:28 · Score: 0
  
  Bitcoin does not use floating point code.
46. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by turp182 · 2013-10-06 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for the information, I wasn't aware of those type of details regarding the production side (everything I know about Bitcoins I learned on Slashdot, I would say it's been a decent education...).
  
  --
  BlameBillCosby.com
47. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by jonbryce · 2013-10-06 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  Price is total size of the economy divided by money in circulation. DPR's money isn't in circulation, so doesn't affect the price until such time as he does decide to start spending it. If his money is destroyed, it will never enter circulation, so will never cause prices to rise, but it won't cause them to fall either.
  However, Silk Road was a very large part of the bitcoin economy, and it is no longer there. Some people will move to alternative markets. Some will stop buying drugs with bitcoin altogether because they no longer consider it to be as safe as they used to think it was. That could lead to a large fall in the value of bitcoin (increase in prices of those things still available in bitcoin, ie inflation).
48. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 05:57 · Score: 0
  
  When you've been in training for that long, you can't expect to be the brightest flash in the pan.
49. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Asgard · 2013-10-06 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  Strictly speaking it is the speed of the active miners, not the total number of them.
50. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by ultranova · 2013-10-06 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah... because we've never had problems with adding a crapton of floating point and extra decimal places to math with computers before.
  
  Bitcoin doesn't use floating point, it uses fixed point. From the computer's point of view it's all integer math (and the only operations are addition and substraction), which is completely precise, and only gets presented as a floating point number to the user for the sake of convenience. This wouldn't change should the current atomic unit (Satoshi) was replace by, say, nanosatoshis. And indeed, the Qt client allows you to change the unit of display.
  Also, please note that traditional currencies do this kind of readjustments occasionally too, to keep the typical amounts in a range convenient to express without needing to use scientific notation. Altough it would had been better if the Bitcoin protocol would had been designed to do so automatically without needing interference - for example, if x% of transactions in the past n blocks are less or greater than some treshold, change the fixed point for the next one - just like difficulty is auto-adjusted.
  
  Some of the greatest financial scams of our time were based on rounding and floating point errors.
  
  Such as?
  
  The idea that the currency can be "infinitely divisible" is not a selling point, it's a structural weakness.
  
  Even if your earlier statement about rounding errors was correct, a more divisible currency would actually make them less severe than one that's limited to two decimal places. A rounding error of 1/100,000,000th gives a lot less room to profit from scamming than 1/100th, after all.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
51. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 08:18 · Score: 0
  
  He was talking about BCD (currency type) which is correct. It's used for all financial transactions because it is 100% accurate and immune to precision errors (i.e. overflows are well-known and predictable).
  So this has absolutely nothing to do with stealing pennies because of the precision of integer or floating point operations. You could likewise steal 0.1 cents off of a BCD type but that in no way means there are precision errors inherent in the type.
  Further, Y2K had nothing to do with precision. It was entirely about not enough room to store a fully defined number.
  Lastly, even though number storage and manipulation can get hairy at times, this is *really* basic CS101 stuff (or any math/engineering). It's obvious you're not in a technical field so some leeway can be given. But do try to at least visit wikipedia for the basics before posting next time.
52. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by wvmarle · 2013-10-06 13:25 · Score: 1
  
  Except there the decimal divider moves in the opposite direction...
53. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by EETech1 · 2013-10-06 15:26 · Score: 1
  
  1. Write "free" IOS wallet app that includes slight rounding error
  2. Hide disclaimer in terms and conditions for the APP that this slight error may exist under certain circumstances and you are not responsible for any losses from using
  said APP
  3. PROFIT!
  But Seriously...
  You could use a fixed point signed 64 bit integer and still have > 11 decimal places of precision without having to even use BCD!
  If they can't accurately divide the bitcoin into a billion pieces without losing some of it, how would they have designed and verified the rest of the mathematics needed for a secure "crypto currency"?
  Perhaps they could brute force the remaining balance (Wallet = Wallet - 0.00000001) on an ASIC along with the hashes for the block chain to be sure the 3rd grade math part of the equation isn't experiencing any rounding errors.
  Dividing up the bitcoin is the easy part!
  Just my $0.01999999999387
  Cheers!
54. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Richy_T · 2013-10-07 02:50 · Score: 1
  
  The current implementation is that way. If the community feels it needs to smaller subdivisions, it can.
55. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by GuB-42 · 2013-10-07 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  Right. Infinite precision means infinite memory, you need to set a limit.
  For BTC, the limit is currently a hundred-millionth.
  Also, because of all the issues with floating point values, financial calculations are usually done in fixed point.
56. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by Patch86 · 2013-10-07 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  It is by mainstream economists.
  Others see inflation as a form of "theft" or "tax" taking spending power away from those who decide to keep hold of their money rather than investing it.
  My understanding of mainstream economic theory (which is poor; but this is the internet, so I won't let that stop me) is that both inflation and deflation are considered bad. However, unlike inflation, deflation is considered "infectious".
  If you have some money and it is experiencing deflation, it will be worth more tomorrow than it is today. So why spend it today? That widescreen TV you wanted- why not wait until tomorrow, then you can buy one and have more money left over! Except the same is true of the day after too, and the day after that- tomorrow never comes. Instead of having money as a means of exchange, it becomes and investment to buy up and horde.
  Inflation is bad too, but it doesn't do that. So, if you want to maintain your currency at a stable point, with as little inflation and deflation as possible, the way to do it is to aim for a small amount of inflation (say, 1%). The inflation won't spiral of its own accord, and it gives you a small buffer from the deadly contagious deflation.
  That's the theory anyway. In relation to Bitcoin, this could turn out pretty text book. If Bitcoin is deflating, then people will use it as an investment ("buy now, sell at a profit later") rather than a currency. All the Bitcoins end up in huge hordes (which makes them even more likely to be lost en masse, I suppose, as in the original topic of this thread) , which means all the liquidity leaves the market and nobody uses it as a currency any more. The goal of having a decentralised, anonymous currency is lost, and instead you just have an electronic pyramid scheme.
57. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by micahraleigh · 2013-10-07 05:29 · Score: 0
  
  80%+ of economists work for the government. That means they are financially behooved to promote centralized money policy.
  
  Deflation caused by currency loss is exceptionally low. Think about it. How much money do people want to throw away? How many people are in this guy's shoes. Basically nobody.
  
  So if you can make 0.01% of your money by stashing it in your wallet you are losing money compared to what you would have investing it. Most people would rather make the higher returns (again, because people (rich or poor) tend to not want to lose money).
  
  And they shouldn't feel bad about not wanting to lose money!
58. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by allo · 2013-10-07 08:46 · Score: 1
  
  a coin is defined by its blockchain, which proves, that the coin is the first mined version of this coin. Doublespending IS possible, as long as the other coin is inactive long enough, and the other person does not know about it. And if they network remembers each coin mined, even if its not sure it ever existed, it could be spammed with fake-coins. they could not be spent, but they could pollute the network.
59. Re:Disappearing Bitcoins by allo · 2013-10-07 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  But there also is no way to know, if the coin exists, if the blockchain isn't propagated anymore. So maybe its a bad idea to keep it under your mattress. Or its a bad idea to mine, when you must assume there are coins under the matress ... because i guess the older blockchain wins, when the coins are reactivated.
The FBI doesn't need his money though by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

They'll get along fine with him in prison, and by the time he gets out, the Bitcoins will be a dead fantasy.
1. Re:The FBI doesn't need his money though by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:25 · Score: 0
  
  Or, they'll be worth even more of a fortune.
  Imagine having 'assets' that *nobody* can take away from you at any time?
2. Re:The FBI doesn't need his money though by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:50 · Score: 0
  
  The charges in the affidavit would probably give him a life sentence, all told, if the government chose to throw the book at him. If he takes a plea bargain, perhaps one that includes snitching on any other associates in the scene, maybe not.
3. Re:The FBI doesn't need his money though by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:20 · Score: 0
  
  The charges in the affidavit would probably give him a life sentence, all told, if the government chose to throw the book at him. If he takes a plea bargain, perhaps one that includes snitching on any other associates in the scene, maybe not.
  As Ken at Popehat has pointed out, while DPR is looking at a serious sentence, it's not really a+b+c+d... 10 to 20 or 30, maybe.
4. Re:The FBI doesn't need his money though by fustakrakich · 2013-10-05 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  The FBI doesn't need his money? Heh, maybe not, but have you ever heard of a pirate leaving a found treasure chest unopened? They might not need it, but they sure want it. Let's see if they can't make it magically appear.
  
  --
  “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
5. Re:The FBI doesn't need his money though by lxs · 2013-10-05 19:34 · Score: 1
  
  As compensation for cracking the crypto, NSA will want at least 50%.
Lost forever? by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 15:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

Now imagine that this Ulbright ends up in jail, or dies, the keys to this encrypted wallet are lost, and with it these 600,000 bitcoin are lost. I think this is a pretty realistic scenario.
Now what consequence would this be for the bitcoin as a currency, when a significant chunk of its coins are taken our of the equation? It's about 5% of the current total number of almost 12 million bitcoin in existence (and 3% of the theoretical maximum of 21 mln). And bitcoin can not be recreated or added to, like a regular currency.
Another thing of note, is that apparently a single bitcoin user managed to amass 5% of the total number of that currency in existence. Those numbers potentially give that person massive market power: dumping them all on the market in one go would cause the value of bitcoin to crash. Smaller quantities have that potential already.
1. Re:Lost forever? by khallow · 2013-10-05 15:35 · Score: 2
  
  Those numbers potentially give that person massive market power: dumping them all on the market in one go would cause the value of bitcoin to crash.
  
  So what? The power to temporarily depress the value of goods or services is something a lot of people possess. But they don't use it because they aren't dumb and don't want to lose a lot of money.
2. Re:Lost forever? by girlintraining · 2013-10-05 16:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Now imagine that this Ulbright ends up in jail, or dies, the keys to this encrypted wallet are lost, and with it these 600,000 bitcoin are lost. I think this is a pretty realistic scenario.
  No, he has the bitcoin equivalent of 600,000; Not 600,000 actual coins. The coins themselves are divisible.. so he has a crapton of fractions of coins, adding up to a total of 600,000.
  
  Now what consequence would this be for the bitcoin as a currency, when a significant chunk of its coins are taken our of the equation? It's about 5% of the current total number of almost 12 million bitcoin in existence (and 3% of the theoretical maximum of 21 mln)
  
  Umm, bad news: As of this submission, there were 11,800,375 coins created so far. The "theoretical maximum" is 21 million coins, yes, but you forgot each coin is divisible by https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#21_million_coins_isn.27t_enough.3B_doesn.27t_scale
  ">100,000,000. So in actuality, there are 2,099,999,997,690,000 units of currency that can be traded without modification to the current protocol. What most people don't understand about bitcoin is that even if a few coins here and there fall out of circulation, or even more than a few, so long as there are a sufficient number of atomic currency units available for trade, the system will function perfectly. Trading in bitcoins is more like trading in company stock than in actual currency -- they can be divided, aggregated, etc., etc. A bitcoin is, at the protocol level, just a token for a massive transactional log called the 'block chain'. It doesn't matter how many bitcoins are generated, or how many fall out of circulation, as long as enough remain in circulation to cover the transactions since the last block in the chain was created.
  
  Another thing of note, is that apparently a single bitcoin user managed to amass 5% of the total number of that currency in existence. Those numbers potentially give that person massive market power: dumping them all on the market in one go would cause the value of bitcoin to crash. Smaller quantities have that potential already.
  That person is now no longer a person, but a government. Just a minor footnote. Now, all that said, here's the thing about bitcoins... should we ever run out of them for whatever reason, we can always 'reset the clock' as it were -- start a new seed, a new block zero, and start building a new block chain from there. This isn't like IPv4 address space exhaustion; We just plug in a new seed and viola, Bitcoin Mark II.
  Eeeh... all that said, I don't trade in bitcoins and I think the entire business is silly but if we're going to talk turkey, we should at least be accurate in our assessments.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
3. Re:Lost forever? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 19:36 · Score: 0
  
  I look forward to a day when a currency like bitcoin becomes more attractive as a currency due to its very nature to enough people that it supplants fiat currency by virtue of its adoption. It would be nice if that happened in the sort of way where people just picked it because it was the better option. It would reduce the governement's leverage over people, and that seems like a good thing, right?
4. Re:Lost forever? by lxs · 2013-10-05 19:40 · Score: 1
  
  We just plug in a new seed and viola, Bitcoin Mark II.
  Or Bitcoin mark XXVII...
5. Re:Lost forever? by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 20:34 · Score: 2
  
  Now imagine that this Ulbright ends up in jail, or dies, the keys to this encrypted wallet are lost, and with it these 600,000 bitcoin are lost. I think this is a pretty realistic scenario.
  No, he has the bitcoin equivalent of 600,000; Not 600,000 actual coins. The coins themselves are divisible.. so he has a crapton of fractions of coins, adding up to a total of 600,000.
  That still doesn't make it any less than the 5% of current total coins (or fractions of coins) around.
  If you divide each by a million, it means he has 600,000,000,000 millionth of bitcoin. THat is still 5% of the "millionth bitcoin" around
  And, as has been shown many times before so not going to repeat it, the mere fact that there is a limited number of bitcoin is an issue, making the value of a single bitcoin (or whatever small fraction - that's irrelevant) increase in value all the time. Maybe you use a whole bitcoin to buy a chair online now, if more and more people use it you'll say "oh, then you start using fractions!", then that chair is going to cost say 0.1 bitcoin later. Or even less. How many times you can divide the coin, doesn't matter, the problem remains the same. Having so large fractions of bitcoin potentially removed from circulation is the problem.
6. Re:Lost forever? by tulimulta · 2013-10-05 21:25 · Score: 1
  
  One thing's for sure, if the bitcoins are lost. We'll be getting a whole new genre of Nigerian scam letters.
7. Re:Lost forever? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:18 · Score: 0
  
  Patagonian scam letters, claiming that the _real_ Dread Pirate Roberts was not caught in Silk Road sting and needs your help exchanging Bitcoins?
8. Re:Lost forever? by AmiMoJo · 2013-10-05 22:43 · Score: 1
  
  should we ever run out of them for whatever reason, we can always 'reset the clock' as it were -- start a new seed, a new block zero, and start building a new block chain from there.
  The new currency would only have any real value if people recognized it though, and since lots of people have a big incentive not to recognize it (it would devalue their Bitcoins) that seems unlikely to happen.
  At the moment Bitcoin isn't very useful for the ordinary consumer because its value fluctuates too much. It's fine if you are mining or in some business where you can accept BTC and then spend it on other services. Well, these days even mining is a waste of time and energy unless you were one of the lucky ones to get in early on the ASIC gig, and that isn't going to last long.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
9. Re:Lost forever? by sociocapitalist · 2013-10-05 22:45 · Score: 1
  
  Eeeh... all that said, I don't trade in bitcoins and I think the entire business is silly but if we're going to talk turkey, we should at least be accurate in our assessments.
  Not sure that bitcoins are any less real than a lot of the rest of the crap that people trade in the markets.
  
  --
  blindly antisocialist = antisocial
10. Re:Lost forever? by IamTheRealMike · 2013-10-05 23:38 · Score: 1
  
  It reduces the maximum resolution of the system and means some prices would be too small to represent on the wire.
  Should the Bitcoin community one day be so successful that the system being unable to represent prices low enough is an actual problem, a flag day can be scheduled which changes the wire-size of the value units in the protocol, thus adding more "decimal places" (they are not really represented as floats).
  The nice thing about Bitcoin is that it's a consensus system, so scheduling flag days is quite straightforward as long as you do actually get a majority of people to upgrade by the given date. As long as a majority do, the rest of the nodes will be automatically disconnected from the system and have to upgrade to rejoin.
11. Re:Lost forever? by wvmarle · 2013-10-06 00:17 · Score: 1
  
  This solves a different problem than the limited total supply of bitcoin. One bitcoin is still one bitcoin, and there are never more than about 21 million of those, no matter how small fractions you trade in. If you need smaller and smaller fractions to represent a price, the value of the bitcoin themselves increases.
12. Re:Lost forever? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:56 · Score: 0
  
  Eeeh... all that said, I don't trade in bitcoins and I think the entire business is silly but if we're going to talk turkey, we should at least be accurate in our assessments.
  Not sure that bitcoins are any less real than a lot of the rest of the crap that people trade in the markets.
  I can take a brand new USA $100 bill and spend it on goods and services anywhere on the goddamn planet.
  I can take a barnd new bitcoin and spend it... almost nowhere. Silk Road was one of the only places you could do anything with it other than donate to some cause who would proceed to... convert it to dollars.
  Your mind makes it real, Neo.
13. Re:Lost forever? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 04:17 · Score: 0
  
  Also the fact that 5% belonged to someone involved in illicit activity points to another problem. Bitcoin will increasingly be tied to criminals and enemies of the state. It will cast a negative pall over the currency. This may be the beginning of the end. As much as I like bitcoin, and feel like if any virtual currency could succeed, then it's bitcoin; I feel like this may be the beginning of the end. :/
14. Re:Lost forever? by QuasiSteve · 2013-10-06 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  I can take a brand new USA $100 bill and spend it on goods and services anywhere on the goddamn planet.
  Good luck with that anywhere outside of the U.S., close to the border in Canada, slightly further out into Mexico, and places like South Korea and the Philippines where the U.S. has long held a military or political presence that makes it attractive for vendors there to accept U.S. Dollars.
  Go to a Belgian grocery store, see how far you get with it. In the odd chance that they'll accept it, expect it to end up taking you only as far as $90, because they would promptly proceed to... convert it to Euros. And have to incur the exchange fee. And charge you a little extra still because now the manager has to make a trip to the exchange bureau.
  As for places that accept Bitcoin.. not authoritative (some sites I saw no mention of Bitcoin, but then most of them only offer it on checkout - after filling in all your details, just like most retailers):
  https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/
  And, of course, you can buy pretty much any Amazon.com item through a number of services, including those who sell gift cards (which includes an even longer list of retailers, restaurants, etc.)
  The fact that they most likely convert it into U.S. Dollars is not an argument against Bitcoin any more than the fact that most of the funds a customer sends to Amazon for electronics items gets very quickly converted into Chinese Yuan is an argument against U.S. Dollars.
15. Re:Lost forever? by archont · 2013-10-06 12:18 · Score: 1
  
  I can walk into a store with a plastic bag full of stocks, swaps, derivatives, bonds and futures. Chances are I couldn't buy a bubble gum.
  Those particular financial instruments are abstractions of abstractions to the n-th layer - in fact, much further away from "money" than bitcoins. And by money I understand a token of value - because it's scarce, like gold or bitcoins, or because people have decided to use it as currency - like fiat money or bitcoins.
Minor details! by girlintraining · 2013-10-05 15:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million -- or about 600,000 Bitcoins.
Yes, and given how badly he managed his assets, I doubt even a fraction of this will be recovered. He was not a very good businessman, his servers weren't very well secured... in fact the only thing in the "had lots of" category with this guy was ego. I mean really... "Dread Pirate Roberts"? And have you seen some of the things he wrote on this website of his? "I'll take as much of your money as I want because this is my ship. If you don't like it, fuck off." -- It's actually included in the criminal indictment against him, along with a laundry list of, shall we say, personality shortcomings of his leading to other elements of the criminal underground coming by to explain all meanings of the word "respect" to him, and then him blowing tons and tons of money either paying these people off, or trying (pathetically) to put hits out on them.
If there's one charge I could add to the indictment, it would be criminal stupidity.

It now comes out that those 26,000 Bitcoins aren't even Ulbricht's. Instead, they're actually from Silk Road's users. In other words, these were Bitcoins stored with user accounts on Silk Road.

Technically, they were for purchases pending. Silk road worked by letting you transfer coins into a silk road proxy account. It ran every submission through its "tumbler" to randomize which coins were actually used for which transactions. So what was seized was basically the day's take out of the register, as it were.

Ulbricht's actual wallet is separate from that, and was apparently encrypted, so it would appear that...
That he'll be charged as a terrorist and sequested in a room somewhere to be beaten with a metal pipe or waterboarded until he gives up the password. Has anyone heard from him lately?

And given that some courts have argued you can't be forced to give up your encryption, as it's a 5th Amendment violation...
We'll just create a new court especially to prosecute terrorists like him extrajudicially. Oh wait... we already did.

The article also notes that the FBI's own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction.

Taunting the police has historically worked out quite well for criminals. Dude, you aren't anonymous. You basically just signed your own search warrant.

--
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. Re:Minor details! by Nutria · 2013-10-05 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  to be beaten with a metal pipe
  A $5 wrench, you wannabe.
  
  or waterboarded until he gives up the password.
  At Gitmo, natch.
  
  --
  "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
2. Re:Minor details! by Robotron23 · 2013-10-05 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  That he'll be charged as a terrorist and sequested in a room somewhere to be beaten with a metal pipe or waterboarded until he gives up the password. Has anyone heard from him lately?
  Ulbricht appeared in court on Friday, and after a request from his legal team has a bail hearing scheduled for October 9th.
3. Re:Minor details! by SuricouRaven · 2013-10-05 18:54 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think the government would want to recover them - if they were to sieze them, what would they do then? They can't spend or sell the coins, because doing so would be giving an implicit endorsement to bitcoin as a valid currency.
4. Re:Minor details! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:45 · Score: 0
  
  Let me tell you, when you mature past being an XKCD fan and become an adult, you'll be thrilled.
5. Re:Minor details! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:27 · Score: 0
  
  The police sell seized stuff all the time, that does not make cars or bicycles a valid currency it simply makes bitcoins valued at a certain dollar amount at the given time.
6. Re:Minor details! by pipatron · 2013-10-05 23:29 · Score: 1
  
  The Swedish police is right now trying to sell 28 poodles which were seized. That isn't an implicit endorsement to poodles as a valid currency in Sweden.
  
  --
  c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
7. Re:Minor details! by SuricouRaven · 2013-10-06 01:07 · Score: 1
  
  Physical objects have an inherent value. Completly different.
8. Re:Minor details! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:39 · Score: 0
  
  So what was seized was basically the day's take out of the register, as it were.
  Wrong. Some would be the till (SR commissions) some money was venders cash for in process trades and some were users who either left money or were in process of making buys & had cash in their wallets.
  It was not all the roads (DPR's) cash I would guess only a small percentage.
9. Re:Minor details! by QuasiSteve · 2013-10-06 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  ( You mis-replied in the thread - just a heads-up. )
  
  Physical objects have an inherent value. Completly different.
  True, though sometimes the deemed value is disproportionate to that inherent value.
  A first run first issue of Superman has an inherent value of a few pennies if you only consider the paper for recycling purposes. It'll be a few dollars if you take its original value and adjust for inflation, etc. Yet if sold at police auction, you can bet that they'll want the $100,000 (or whatever it's at) for it.
  Sure, a virtual currency representation will likely not be a collector's item, a piece of art, or appreciate in value based on sentiment in general. But there's no technical reason they can't sell it for whatever the market deems it to be worth.
  As far as any legitimacy goes.. the U.S. government has already considered it 'legitimate', like most other goods (drugs being a particular exemption), and as soon as you trade it in for Dollars, will happily accept it being factored into your tax filings. In fact, they insist.
  That's not the same as declaring it a currency that can be taxed directly, as Germany appears to have done, though.
A Possible Cause of Deflation by cervesaebraciator · 2013-10-05 15:41 · Score: 1

Could seizure by authorities unable to crack encryption have some even slight deflationary effects on Bitcoins?
1. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by mysidia · 2013-10-05 15:56 · Score: 1
  
  Could seizure by authorities unable to crack encryption have some even slight deflationary effects on Bitcoins?
  There is likely not enough trade in bitcoins or economic activity, for much deflation to occur. It was only some small portion of the total bitcoins available that are taken out of circulation by the seizure.
  It is not as if the guy was offering all those BTCs on the open market previously; coins that are being hoarded, don't really cause deflation when they vanish.
2. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:01 · Score: 0
  
  I do hope authorities get a seizure at some point for their wrongdoings.
3. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by Richy_T · 2013-10-05 16:08 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think you understand deflation.
4. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by cervesaebraciator · 2013-10-05 16:42 · Score: 1
  
  There's a far greater chance that I don't understand Bitcoin. I have in mind a scenario where the authorities seize fairly large quantities of the currency and permanently remove it from circulation on account of their inability to crack the encryption. Permanently removing any currency, from greenbacks to gold, would have a deflationary effect since it would decrease the monetary supply relative to the supply of available goods and services. Put differently, the relative scarcity of the currency would mean that the price of goods and services in that currency would decrease. All this assumes, of course, that the currency in question could in fact be exchanged for goods and services.
  My question chiefly regards what, if any, guards BTC has against such effects.
5. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by cervesaebraciator · 2013-10-05 16:52 · Score: 1
  
  Good point. I didn't realize hoarding was so bad in BTC. Your comment sent me off on a tangent to this article and it appears you're quite correct on that account. Even so, my question was intended as mostly hypothetical (hence the "some even slight"). It seems that if there's only a slight amount in circulation, the deflationary effects of any of the circulating currency being removed from the market (via seizure by authorities unable to crack the encryption) would have an amplified effect.
  Authorities do not act against the banks in a major way for fear of the effects it might have on the market should one of the banks fail in consequence. If an authority wishes to seize private assets, however, they needn't worry about the deflationary effects of seizing currency since they'll easily come up with ways of getting that back into circulation. I'm just pondering whether encrypted and inaccessible-to-authorities-currency might not in some conceivable future be its own miniature too-big-too-fail.
6. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by TheRealMindChild · 2013-10-05 17:33 · Score: 1
  
  Put differently, the relative scarcity of the currency would mean that the price of goods and services in that currency would decrease Negative. Like gold, if a chunk went missing forever, the demand vs supply would increase, hence making existing supply more valuable.
  
  --
  
  "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
7. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:59 · Score: 0
  
  If the TLAs are actively removing the "currency" by any means possible, would there still be a demand for the users to want to stay in that "currency"? Won't they want to cash out in earliest opportunity?
8. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by sourcerror · 2013-10-05 17:59 · Score: 1
  
  Negative, both are the same thing. And it's called deflation.
9. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by SuricouRaven · 2013-10-05 19:53 · Score: 1
  
  Removal of coins from circulation would act to cause potentially extreme deflation. Investing in bitcoins is a high-risk move, but the win if it pays off could be a gain of a thousand percent a year - providing the government doesn't actually try a major clampdown.
10. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by wvmarle · 2013-10-05 23:45 · Score: 1
  
  There is already massive deflationary pressure on bitcoin simply by its design of limited supply. If you don't realise that, you don't understand deflation (hint: it means that prices of goods go down, and as such that the value of the currency used to pay for those goods goes up, albeit not necessarily reflected in the exchange rate of that currency towards other currencies). Which in case of bitcoin happens because demand for bitcoin outstrips supply (especially if it's really going to be used more and more).
11. Re:A Possible Cause of Deflation by Richy_T · 2013-10-07 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  OK. What you say is correct. But the removal of the coins *is* the deflation, it doesn't cause it as such.
  As to whether it will cause an increase in price, that's a different matter. It would likely cause some but there are many Bitcoins not in circulation that will come into play with a price increase so the effect is mitigated somewhat.
FBI Culpable In Fraud by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:41 · Score: 0

"FBI's own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction."
Ah. Obama's "Super Duper Serfs" have failed the first test of "Super Duper" obviously.
Now, we have verifiable information and links of Obama to the DoJ's actions all to inflate the value of Obama's financial wealth at the expense of peoples world wide.
So simple.
How lovely.
Obama is now trash for the bin.
None too soon.
1. Re:FBI Culpable In Fraud by SuricouRaven · 2013-10-05 19:54 · Score: 1
  
  It is an American tradition to attribute any and all actions of government to the President personally. He is the symbol of the country, and thus takes all of the credit and all of the blame - even in situations like this, where there is no evidence he was even aware of Silk Road or has ever shown any knowledge of bitcoin.
Missing $80 million by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:48 · Score: 0

He buried them in 50-gallon drums in the desert. Here are the coordinates:
+34 59 20.00, -106 36 52”
1. Re:Missing $80 million by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:50 · Score: 0
  
  Get there before the neo-Nazis show up
2. Re:Missing $80 million by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:43 · Score: 0
  
  Get there before the geo-Nazis show up
  FTFY
Re:wasnt it 3.6 million? by compro01 · 2013-10-05 15:48 · Score: 1

Read the story.
$3.6 million was the money in transit between buyers and sellers. SR offered a mixing system for payments between buyers and sellers to make tracing who bought from who more difficult. It was the money in the mixer when they seized the server.
$80 million is the estimate of the guy's personal fortune.

--
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Re:wasnt it 3.6 million? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:51 · Score: 0

Congratulations on not even managing to read the summary.
Re:wasnt it 3.6 million? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 15:59 · Score: 0

It's not that bitcoin is unstable bullshit (which it might be) but that you fail at reading comprehension.

The 3.6 million is from the 26,000 bitcoins taken from user accounts on his servers for purchases pending.

The 80 million is from the 600,000 bitcoins that are in his personal wallet.
interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Cito · 2013-10-05 16:00 · Score: 2, Funny

I got my package I ordered in mail today :-) at my mailbox etc drop box
I had made a small hash order and then saw news of the shut down, where I live there is 2 unsecured hotspots a library, and a coffee shop I can reach with my beam antenna which I used those for silk road purchases.
I gave up thinking I wouldn't get my order since the site shut down 3 days after my order.
But the funny thing is I got home opened the blank package inside was my hash and a small funny message printed and cut out saying "so long and thanks for all the fish..."
Hehe, there is another "silk road" type site that went up but is more of a classifieds Craigslist type setup I saw advertised on the "hackBB" tor forum which is still up.
1. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:39 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I don't get it... you go through all that trouble to purchase in a manner you feel is anon on silk road, but then you post about it on slashdot using your registered account? I don't know much about silk road or its transactions, but it sort of blows my mind that people would sent drugs through the mail, nevermind risk picking them up. Same people who don't mind their drugs having bits of feces on them from time to time I suppose.
2. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by DiSKiLLeR · 2013-10-05 16:44 · Score: 2
  
  Anddd you didn't post this anonymously.
  
  --
  You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
3. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by myowntrueself · 2013-10-05 17:46 · Score: 1
  
  Anddd you didn't post this anonymously.
  Because posting anonymously on /. protects privacy (from 3-letter US agencies).
  
  --
  In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
4. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by l0n3s0m3phr34k · 2013-10-05 17:55 · Score: 1
  
  well, maybe he's high off his hash he just got?
5. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Firethorn · 2013-10-05 18:59 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I don't get it... you go through all that trouble to purchase in a manner you feel is anon on silk road, but then you post about it on slashdot using your registered account?
  Given the nature of the internet, it can easily be argued that he's lying his ass off. Even if he isn't, 'small hash order' indicates he's a user, not a dealer, thus *on average* incredibly unlikely to be a worthy target for the 3+ agencies you'd need to coordinate with in order to track him down.
  Off the top of my head - you'd need to get a warrant to get slashdot to disclose Cito's account and IP address information. Then you'd need to figure out WHERE in the world he is(presumably the USA). You have to hope that he was using home or at least work for his slashdot postings rather than using the same anonymous internet cafe. Once you've figured out where he is, you have to contact the appropriate state police agency to coordinate with, along with the postmaster general(assuming USPS was used as opposed to UPS/Fedex).
  On Average it's just not worth it. They want dealers, not users.
  
  --
  I don't read AC A human right
6. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:57 · Score: 0
  
  As long as he doesn't provide any specific details there is nothing connecting him to the transaction. Having said that, he definitely has destroyed his alibi if they intercept a package being sent to him and have written proof of his admission...
7. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:46 · Score: 0
  
  >> I had made a small hash order
  #order?
  What font size, please share.
8. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by LordLucless · 2013-10-06 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  Off the top of my head - you'd need to get a warrant to get slashdot to disclose Cito's account and IP address information. Then you'd need to figure out WHERE in the world he is(presumably the USA). You have to hope that he was using home or at least work for his slashdot postings rather than using the same anonymous internet cafe. Once you've figured out where he is, you have to contact the appropriate state police agency to coordinate with, along with the postmaster general(assuming USPS was used as opposed to UPS/Fedex).
  Or, you could read his last few slashdot posts, discover that he's said he gets his power from Colquitt EMC, which a quick Google tells me, means that he's in Tifton, Georgia. Read a bit more, and you'll find he claims to be a licensed HAM operator. That shrinks the suspect pool considerably. People who overshare on one post probably have in the past too.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
9. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 09:01 · Score: 0
  
  Or, you could read his last few slashdot posts, discover that he's said he gets his power from Colquitt EMC, which a quick Google tells me, means that he's in Tifton, Georgia. Read a bit more, and you'll find he claims to be a licensed HAM operator. That shrinks the suspect pool considerably. People who overshare on one post probably have in the past too.
  Still, who cares? He's a small time pot smoker. There are thousands of them in every county. Millions in some. The war on drugs might be insane, but they sure can't afford to try and track down random posts on the internet like this. They can't even afford to jail everyone who posts that way. Get some perspective.
10. Re:interesting end for my travel on the silk road by Cito · 2013-10-06 15:15 · Score: 1
  
  >> I had made a small hash order
  #order?
  What font size, please share.
  9pt, fairly small... :-)
Re:wasnt it 3.6 million? by Richy_T · 2013-10-05 16:07 · Score: 1

The price has been fairly stable over that period. It fell a bit on the news but has mostly recovered.
Re:But, but, but... by WaywardGeek · 2013-10-05 16:09 · Score: 2

No, that's not what people have been saying at all. No one is saying that the NSA can create SHA-1 collisions at will, or decrypt AES at will. Geeks on slashdot should be able to succeed in protecting data they really want hidden, such as a bitcoin wallet. It sounds like this guy did just that. No reasonable interpretation of the 5th amendment would allow the government to force him to give up his passwords.
The "Privacy Chicken Littles" have been complaining about the NSA tracking their locations, analyzing their social network connections, reading their emails, and generally sticking their electronic surveillance in every orifice. Personally, I'd have much less of a problem with this if they fessed up to what they're doing to spy on us. It's secret police that really scare me.

--
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Why is it assumed that they can't crack it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 16:12 · Score: 1

For a random person with a relatively minor offense, I don't see the effort being worth it, but brute forcing this should be simple enough given the power that's available.
First thing I'd do is break his other passwords, those will give immediate clues to the sort of password style that is being dealt with... No symbols? Always starts with uppercase? Never more than two capitals? Hell, given his track record it's just as likely that half the passwords are reused.
So... given a reasonably accurate set of parameters, I bet the total possible set of passwords becomes very reasonable, even considering the double encryption that takes place with the wallet (SHA512 is used on the master key before AES IIRC) and technically doubling the CPU effort needed for brute forcing. If the NSA wanted it, a couple hours with his stuff and a few more hours of brute forcing would do it.
Regardless of how great the encryption itself is, key management is still the biggest weakness. Either he has to be able to remember it, which means it's either short or predictable in some fashion, or it has to be stored which means it's recoverable.
1. Re:Why is it assumed that they can't crack it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:03 · Score: 0
  
  Does it actually need to be cracked though?
  If they know the wallet address then surely all they have to do is download the blockchain and scan through it to find what went into it and when. Isn't that the point of the block chain? To verify that payments are legit?
2. Re:Why is it assumed that they can't crack it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:18 · Score: 0
  
  For a serious store of Bitcoins like that I wouldn't be surprised if he'd committed the private key to memory and destroyed all physical copies (It's what I did). Lacking the technology to retrieve the key from a scan of his brain the only practical method available is torture.
  Additionally, enforcement don't need the money to prosecute. It's not as if it's encrypted evidence.
3. Re:Why is it assumed that they can't crack it? by AHuxley · 2013-10-05 18:49 · Score: 1
  
  Tracking the people around the networks, chats, forums seems to be the way in.
  The years of good chat and having a valued 'name' gets ~malware ~spyware ~keyloggers in.
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
4. Re:Why is it assumed that they can't crack it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:20 · Score: 0
  
  That could be one way. His real problem though is being able to retrieve the encrypted wallet at some indeterminate time in the future and the ongoing valaue. Things move and change, if he gets locked up for a few years, wherever he stowed a copy of the wallet need not be accessible anymore, even if it is, who knows the state of bitcoin, perhaps they'll perform well and be more valuable, perhaps badly and much less, or perhaps we'll have moved on and they'll be valueless.
5. Re:Why is it assumed that they can't crack it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:14 · Score: 0
  
  I would be surprised if he committed the key to memory. Given what we know about the rest of his operation (failure to secure and encrypt his servers, not using a sacrificial reverse-proxy as his launching point onto TOR, posting about his site using his real life gmail account, etc etc) it sounds like he really did not have the first clue about security. His wallet.dat will turn out to be unpassworded, sitting on a hard drive they've already seized.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by radarskiy · 2013-10-05 16:51 · Score: 1

If he spends the bitcoins, then the signing chains are unlikely to get very long before someone is willing to roll over for the feds, they they just need to follow the chains upstream. They should also be able to follow chains from the customers downstream.
If he doesn't spend them, then from his perspective they're as good as seized anyway.
The case of the missing bitcoins by TheloniousToady · 2013-10-05 16:58 · Score: 1

Once the government shutdown is over, I predict the FBI will find the missing bitcoins under the cushions of Ulbricht's couch. Or, maybe they'll find his bitcoin wallet in the pocket of his jeans in his mom's washing machine. (Mom never quite understood that thing he said about bitcoins being good for money laundering.)
Oblig, by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 17:35 · Score: 0

Attempted murder? Now honestly, did they ever give anyone a Nobel prize for "attempted chemistry?"
Not a nice guy. by Frosty+Piss · 2013-10-05 17:42 · Score: 1

From The Tellegraph ...

By chance one of those agents, posing as a major drug smuggler, was contacted by Dread Pirate Roberts, who asked him to torture and execute someone who had stolen Bitcoins from the site.
The agent sent fake pictures of a man being tortured, and of a dead body, and was paid $80,000.
Apparently encouraged, Dread Pirate Roberts then asked another drug dealer to kill a Silk Road user in Canada called "FriendlyChemist" who was threatening to release details about the site.
He wrote: "I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position. I wouldn't mind if he was executed."
He then said $150,000 seemed too much, adding: "Don't want to be a pain here but the price seems high. Not long ago I had a clean hit done for $80,000. Are the prices you quoted the best you can do? I would like this done asap ... it doesn't have to be clean."

--
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Indictment by ls671 · 2013-10-05 17:42 · Score: 1

Let's get serious here. These guys still operate with tiny pieces of paper hidden on a human messenger. This is slower than TCP-IP over pigeons:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
As far as getting a serious indictment on those people through monitoring their Internet activities, well it isn't really worthed trying unless you can keep the costs of trying quite low.

--
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 19:12 · Score: 0

They had him under surveillance for a long time. They have any passwords he would use on a regular basis - including any for keepass or similar password wallets.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by jamesh · 2013-10-05 19:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

If he has secured his private keys, then nobody can touch his Bitcoins. Not the NSA, FBI, CIA...
I've heard people say that the NSA can decrypt various things that are thought to be impossible (in reasonable time). Even if that were true, I doubt they are going show their hand and remove all doubt over something as trivial as this, so i think you are correct.
While he still has access to his bitcoins, they can argue that they should be allowed to force him to give up his keys. If he no longer has access to his bitcoins then they can't, so there is an advantage to him putting them somewhere where he can't get them. He'd need to find someone he can trust though...
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by gl4ss · 2013-10-05 19:38 · Score: 1

because they went into his house and tapped his keyboard?
I seriously have hard time believing that he was using keepass or give-nsa-pass for his passwords...

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re: "[x] Post Anonymously" -- use sparingly by deadlydiscs · 2013-10-05 20:16 · Score: 3, Funny

Uh... come on folks, this is /. after all. When you [x] Post Anonymously, it's anonymous. Basically, when you click that anonymous button, it does a reverse traceroute and auto-roots every server and network device you've traveled across to get here. From there, it modifies server and device logs to substitutes your IP with the IP of [famous coffee shop] farthest from your actual location. Only post anonymously when you're absolutely sure you need to. ;)
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by Bite+The+Pillow · 2013-10-05 20:41 · Score: 2

"I've heard people say that..."
I just read "I haven't been paying attention, and or don't understand, but I'm going to type anyway". We have been talking about it for months now, and we can draw a box around what is feasible.
They don't need the money, they just need to take it out of his ability to use. And the transaction history would be more valuable than the dollars. So there is little point trying, except as an academic exercise to explore plausibility.
If they could break it, we wouldn't have this story. Just the normal conspiracy types saying they can, and no denials. It is marginally possible that things have changed recently, but it makes no sense to assume so.
Unless you store sensitive data, in which case you always assume so.
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 21:32 · Score: 1

Nope. An account of his arrest says FBI waited in an ambush for him to open his notebook and login before grabbing him.
Despite what media and/or LEA tells you, planting spyware is not that easy if you're taking care of basic security.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by amorsen · 2013-10-05 21:58 · Score: 1

They don't need the money, they just need to take it out of his ability to use.
This is one of the problems with BitCoin. Coins will be lost over time, as people forget their passwords or die or are otherwise prevented from accessing their wallets. There is no way to get them back or replace them.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 22:54 · Score: 0

You falsely assume that he has to spend them in the US.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by pipatron · 2013-10-05 23:05 · Score: 1

This is not a problem, because of the way bitcoins can be divided.

--
c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-05 23:09 · Score: 0

Until someday we are all trading tiny divisions of the last 3 accessible bitcoins :) Talk about deflation!
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by allo · 2013-10-05 23:10 · Score: 2

which does not mean, that he unlocked any keystores on that notebook.
Also for a lot of things by Sycraft-fu · 2013-10-05 23:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

Public defenders are a good choice. I know that there's this Hollywood cliche that public defenders were C students that are worthless and don't know what they are doing but that isn't usually the case. Many of them are quite passionate about what they do, and good at it. Also they have a lot of trial experience, which is something that private attorneys often don't. Knowing the law and being good at trial are different things and public defenders get a lot of trial time. Plus they have experience with criminal law, since that's what they do. They don't spend time messing with estate planning or shit like they, they defend criminal cases.
So depending on the charge, the area you are in, etc, etc a public defender can actually be good, maybe even the best, option. They may have a better handle on the law and be better at trial than a private lawyer.
1. Re:Also for a lot of things by swillden · 2013-10-06 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  If you need a criminal defender, why would you hire someone who does estate planning and whatnot? Most private criminal defense attorneys are former prosecutors, which means they a great deal of trial experience and know the criminal court process inside and out. And if they've been doing criminal defense for a substantial amount of time, they've acquired yet more experience with it.
  Agreed that you shouldn't use a corporate or estate lawyer for criminal defense... and your corporate or estate lawyer knows the same thing and 99% of them will refuse to take a criminal defense case and instead refer the client to an attorney with the right experience and expertise.
  
  --
  Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
2. Re:Also for a lot of things by fafalone · 2013-10-06 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Some public defenders are good. A lot aren't. And they're almost universally saddled with far more case work than they can effectively handle. In my experience, they decide who is deserving of a break and focus more on their case. And this is first hand experience from inside the system.
3. Re:Also for a lot of things by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 07:18 · Score: 0
  
  Public defenders don't have as much incentive as private lawyers to try their hardest for you. In my experience they are little more than "public plea-bargan-ists".
4. Re:Also for a lot of things by r2kordmaa · 2013-10-06 07:41 · Score: 1
  
  what you need is not a criminal lawyer, but a criminal lawyer
5. Re:Also for a lot of things by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 13:08 · Score: 0
  
  say that to all of the medical marijuana patients who used public defenders and were convicted of posession and manufacturing.
6. Re:Also for a lot of things by jandrese · 2013-10-06 13:49 · Score: 1
  
  On the other hand, a public defender has a fraction of the time to spend on your case that a private lawyer will have. The quailty if the public defender is likely to vary quite a bit by locality as well. If you're a black guy living in an inner city a public defender can be a quick way to get life in prison or execution, even if you are innocent.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
7. Re:Also for a lot of things by ThatAblaze · 2013-10-06 15:38 · Score: 1
  
  The Achilles heal of the public defender is that they usually have like 40 other cases and, if any of their other cases are retained (private) cases then they are getting paid half as much for the public cases as the retained ones. Therefore, best case you are getting a very small fraction of your lawyer's attention and worse case you are getting even less.
Re:But, but, but... by Nutria · 2013-10-05 23:51 · Score: 1

No one is saying that the NSA can create SHA-1 collisions at will, or decrypt AES at will.
You're being so specific, I bet you're an NSA plant.
Those Journalists In The Public Interest at ProPublica sure seem to think that the NSA has their fingers in every pie.

--
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by Rich0 · 2013-10-06 00:08 · Score: 1

If they could break it, we wouldn't have this story. Just the normal conspiracy types saying they can, and no denials.
If the NSA could break RSA, I doubt they'd tell the FBI about it, and I doubt that they'd use it to decrypt a trove of bitcoins. Maybe they might look at some encrypted traffic and figure out where to look, then look there and "happen to spot" some other clue that they could have plausibly stumbled upon, and then provide that clue to the FBI.
That was the sort of thing done in WWII all the time. When sources like Ultra/Magic were used some kind of cover would be created to get the essential data to the people who needed it, as if it had come from someplace else. Protecting the source is more important than taking advantage of the intel.
I have no idea whether the NSA can crack RSA/etc. Certainly no mathematical proof exists that they couldn't, and in fact RSA in particular is known to be vulnerable to factoring via quantum computers - a technology that is entirely theoretically possible.
However, I don't think you can infer anything about the NSA's capabilities from a case like this.
Re:But, but, but... by WaywardGeek · 2013-10-06 00:48 · Score: 1

I would be very surprised if there were no NSA plants on slashdot. Ever get into a back-end-forth on slashdot over some scary thing China has done? My understanding is the Chinese government makes no secret of paying people for positive comments, and the longer you argue with a guy who is unreasonably pro-Chinese, the more money he makes.
If I were a policy maker for the NSA, I would certainly fund shills to help guide the development of secure communication architectures. I do believe I've run into these shills a couple of times, for example when discussing if BitTorrent should switch to SHA-256, which I was advocating. Some dick won the debate to stay on SHA-1 by being so annoying that everyone dropped out of the thread. Whether or not the NSA can currently defeat SHA-1, they have to believe that they will develop such an ability long before they can do so with SHA-256, so keeping BitTorrent on SHA-1 makes sense for the NSA. For example, if someone in Iran is downloading a pirated copy of Microsoft Windows using BitTorrent, the NSA might have some very interesting ideas of what they could do with an NSA-modified copy. They could subvert the torrent if they could defeat SHA-1. I suspect an NSA shill whenever I see someone arguing in an unreasonable fashion for a less secure architecture, or one that is secure, but centrally controlled, or spreading paranoia about developing yet-another-encryption algorithm.
In the end, I trust the algorithms that have been proven through trial by fire. Ecliptic curve cryptography has gone way up in my esteem for it's success in Bitcoin. If it could be cracked for a few million dollars by any technically inclined geek out there, it would have been cracked already. If the NSA can crack it with a multi-billion dollar computer, who cares, other than serious criminals?

--
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by killkillkill · 2013-10-06 01:05 · Score: 1

If you loose cash it's gone as well. If you hide cash and die, it's likely gone. There are ways to prevent, or at least mitigate the scenarios you describes, though. The keys to my the addresses the bulk of bitcoins are stored in are in an encrypted wallet on an offline computer. The keys are deterministic and I have a physical backup of the root stored in a secure location. I have an online computer with a copy of the wallet without the private keys that I can create transactions with take to my offline computer and sign. I use this process for larger transactions and for smaller transactions to my android client if I need to take some with me.
As with the leather wallet in my back pocket my mobile bitcoin wallet only has a small bit of my net worth in it. If I lose either, that bit of money is gone. My keys can't be stolen by a hacker because of an airgap to the internet. They can't be stolen by a burglar because they are encrypted. And if that computer is stolen or I forget my password I can restore the keys from my physical backup. If I die my wife can do the same.
The bitcoin client Armory is designed for this type of setup.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by killkillkill · 2013-10-06 01:10 · Score: 1

Well, it is a problem for the person who forgot their password. Of course, with bitcoin their are many ways to implement your storage that you can have unencrypted backups in a secure place and only need the password for the easier-to-access encrypted wallet.
Wait Wait Wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 01:22 · Score: 0

But that is part of the game. You gut someones means and prosecute them so they can't defend themselves. That is the game the government plays.
Let me get this straight. Are you implying that this is some sort of unjust conspiracy against this person? Do you mean to suggest that he is being unjustly persecuted/prosecuted? Are you implying that it wasn't perfectly and entirely clear that his actions were illegal, virtually everywhere?
Your post has a tone that suggest that you think an evil and unjust government action is being perpetrated against an upstanding citizen. My view is a bit different. This isn't someone making a stand against unjust laws for political reasons or based on moral or principal. This is a drug-dealing-sack-of-shit middleman who managed to do an epic business in a thoroughly illegal trade.
Seriously. Grow up.
1. Re:Wait Wait Wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 04:16 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  This is a drug-dealing-sack-of-shit middleman...
  Who enabled consenting adults to buy their drug of choice in a relatively safe manner with buyer ratings to make sure they didn't get ripped off and pretty much got what they paid for.
  I'm guessing you're a (social) authoritarian rather than libertarian.
How do they know? by tompaulco · 2013-10-06 02:19 · Score: 1

How do they know he got 600,000 bitcoins, and how do they know that he didn't spend them after he got them? As far as I can tell, they can't prove that he ever received 600,000 bitcoins, and chances are, he has spent some of them. The fact that he lived in a shared apartment and had not real business facilities makes me think that the whole thing about him having made any decent amount of money is made up. Probably this isn't even the guy. He's probably just a loud moth ego maniac whose lies have now got him under the FBIs lamp.

--
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by bhspencer · 2013-10-06 03:10 · Score: 1

It is considered good practice to encrypt your private key with a passphrase. Then even if your private key is compromised it cannot be decrypted without the passphrase in your head.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by bhspencer · 2013-10-06 03:13 · Score: 1

That passphrase would usually be digested into a 128 or 256bit secret key and the private key would then be encrypted with AES. Safe and sound.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by slick7 · 2013-10-06 04:13 · Score: 1

The government is pissed at Ross for making a profit for what the governmet does for profit, except the government does not like competition.

--
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by pepty · 2013-10-06 04:19 · Score: 2

it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million -- or about 600,000 Bitcoins. You might notice the disconnect between the 26,000 Bitcoins seized and the supposed 600,000 Ulbright made.
Wouldn't the vast majority of his commissions have already been spent or at least laundered long ago? Why does everyone expect him to have left all of his income in his wallet?
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by shaitand · 2013-10-06 05:29 · Score: 1

They don't need the money to bust him. But because they are drug related crimes they can steal the money (along with everything else he and anyone they can find the slightest indication knew about what he did own) and keep it for the agency. You can be damn sure they want that money.

Why do you think police organizations support the war on drugs so much? They know as much as anyone that it is a pointless war on citizens. They support it so heavily because stealing the money of a multi-millionaire they caught selling a buddy turned snitch 1/4oz ($50) of weed as a favor is a big part of how they fund their organizations. It's why the party who doesn't want to pay taxes supports it so strongly. They'd actually have to fully fund the police by paying their taxes without the war on drugs.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by shaitand · 2013-10-06 05:33 · Score: 1

Why is that a problem? What does it matter if my purchases are denoted in bitmils or whole bitcoins? You just pick some reasonable decimal place along the bitcoin to call the new "1" and you are back to the kind of numbers we are used to dealing with.
true, but OJ Simpson. one juror by raymorris · 2013-10-06 06:07 · Score: 1

> You'd have put money away and bonded lawyers so they could "spring you"? How exactly are these lawyers going to do that? Ulbricht is guilty as fuck and clearly knows it. The two criminal complaints are overflowing with evidence and that's not going to be all the Fed's have got. I have a hard time seeing how any lawyer is going to wriggle out from under all that stuff. Doesn't matter if you somehow managed to bond the best of the best ahead of time
Perhaps that is all true. The lawyers only need to get one juror to say reasonable doubt, though. There was a mountain of evidence against OJ Simpson. His team found the Furman tape and OJ walked.
send your money to someone in the US for crime ... by raymorris · 2013-10-06 06:12 · Score: 2

If you send your money to someone in the US, paying them to commit a crime in the US, that money which is now part of a US crime is going to be seized in the US.
Some cases bring up interesting questions of jurisdiction. This case isn't one of them.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by viperidaenz · 2013-10-06 07:31 · Score: 1

If he has secured his keys, no one can touch his coins.
If the FBI take all the copies of his wallet, he'll never touch them again either.
gave someone Nobel prize for peace while warring by raymorris · 2013-10-06 07:37 · Score: 0

They gave someone a Nobel peace prize for talking about peace while engaging in war. Close enough.
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by Cryacin · 2013-10-06 08:21 · Score: 4, Funny

Did they try "swordfish"?!?

--
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by Cryacin · 2013-10-06 08:24 · Score: 2

Imagine finding a slip of paper from old grandaddee's in the attic, with the details and 1000 bitcoins. The word is "deflation".

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Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Look we cost you tax payers ever a trillion dollar by ralphaostrander · 2013-10-06 08:31 · Score: 1

's. To catch people breathing. The retardation of the drug war leaves you no confidence in anything the government is doing. If there is any budget the Tea Party should end the war on drugs is it. I would say a 3 percent drop in taxes for all would be quit nice. As we get nothing for no matter how many people you stop from breathing the same amount is still out there.
Re:Power of attorney transfer them from his wallet by amorsen · 2013-10-06 09:35 · Score: 1

If you loose cash it's gone as well.
Yes, but we can just print more.

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Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
A 600,000 out of thin air figure, a lot spent by xiando · 2013-10-06 11:26 · Score: 1

Say you have a job and make $5.000 per month. Don't mind if you make more or less and that I just took a round figure out of thin air. That works out to $60000 per year. Five years go by and you've earned $300000. How much money is there in your account 5 years later? Do you likely have $300000 sitting there in your account at that point in time? OR did you perhaps spend each months paycheck paying for rent, utilities, food and other items? I don't know about you but if you are like most people then you probably do NOT have $300000 sitting there in your account after 5 years. You more likely spent everything you got last month and perhaps you have $2000 left of that last $5000 paycheck sitting there in your account. Think about this for a minute. The claim is that SR generated an income of 600.000 BTC. The price of a Bitcoin was $1-2 during SRs lifetime. It was less than $10 during most of SRs lifetime. Media story and popular opinion seems to be that Ulbricht never spent a single Bitcoin but somehow managed to pay bills and expenses anyway and that all bitcoins SR ever made therefore must be sitting in a wallet somewhere. I personally find that opinion highly unlikely.

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9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by GigaplexNZ · 2013-10-06 13:04 · Score: 1

But it does invalidate the claim:

They have any passwords he would use on a regular basis - including any for keepass or similar password wallets.
If they had all the passwords, they wouldn't need to wait for him to log in to the notebook.
Retrieving legal funds by jago25_98 · 2013-10-06 13:12 · Score: 1

If you, for example, had some Bitcoin in your wallet on the site and you were hoping to buy a gold coin anonymously then you have broken no law.
But now the DoJ has taken your money...
how do you get your coins back? Who do you call?
Not everybody on the site was a criminal.

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A blog I run for the wealth
Re: Power of attorney transfer them from his walle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 19:45 · Score: 0

You don't need access to the wallet.dat file to spent your bitcoins, just the private key. If you have that then there nothing anyone can do to prevent you from using it.
Easy.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 20:10 · Score: 0

He'd better call Saul!
Are bit coins real? by Gob+Gob · 2013-10-07 08:45 · Score: 1

If the US cashes out the bit coins then it is endorsing it as a legitimate world currency. If it deletes them then it reduces supply and increases the value for all the "criminals" that trade with them.....